Blair visit played out against bloody backdrop

BAGHDAD - The latest in a series of mass kidnappings spread terror in Baghdad yesterday as British Prime Minister Tony Blair dropped in.

More than 25 aid workers were hauled off at gunpoint from a Baghdad office of the Iraqi Red Crescent aid agency by a gang of 50 gunmen in police uniforms. Another gang shot dead a Sunni local councillor and kidnapped three more from their car.

Against that bloody backdrop, Blair told Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki that Britain will "stand four square behind you and the Iraqi people in ensuring that your democracy is not destroyed by terrorism, by sectarianism".

Blair arrived in a British military transport plane from Cairo and travelled to Maliki's office in the heavily-fortified Green Zone by helicopter. He then went on to talks with President Jalal Talabani.

- AFP