Details and speculations about the 5 British citizens abducted today in Iraq

We're beginning to get some details about the attack on the Iraqi Finance Ministry where 5 Britons were abducted earlier today.

In the Finance Ministry attack, about 40 heavily armed men snatched the five Britons from an annex and sped away in a convoy of 19 four-wheel-drive vehicles toward Sadr City according to the British Foreign office in London and Iraqi officials in the Interior and Finance ministries.

Joe Gavaghan, a spokesman for Montreal-based security firm GardaWorld, confirmed that four of its security workers and one client were kidnapped. All four GardaWorld workers are British citizens, he said, declining to provide more details.

19 vehicles? That's a pretty big operation taking place in the center of Baghdad with no substantial witnesses.

Now for the speculations in the article,

The Finance Ministry kidnappings, if the work of the Mahdi Army as asserted by Iraqi officials, could be retaliation for the killing by British forces last week of the militia's commander in Basra....

The Mahdi Army, which is deeply embedded in the Iraqi security forces, also was believed looking for a way to avenge the recent killing by U.S. forces of a top operative. He was said to have been the author of an attack in the holy city of Karbala in January.

Also: Two big mosque bombings in two days inside Baghdad. One targeting the Sufi al-Gailani mosque which is internationally significant, and another today targeting a Shia mosque in Amil.

Outside of Baghdad:

Of the 120 reported killed or found dead nationwide on Tuesday, 35 were bodies dumped or buried in a newly dug mass grave in Diyala province.....

In other violence, gunmen in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, set up fake checkpoints on the outskirts of the city and abducted more than 40 people, most of them soldiers, police officers and members of two tribes that had banded together against local insurgents.

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