Three senior Iraqi officials kidnapped south of Baghdad

Gunmen abducted a deputy governor of a
central Iraqi province and two other senior Iraqi officials
as they were heading for a meeting with Iraq's top Shiite
cleric, authorities in Tikrit said Saturday.
Khatan Hamada, a deputy governor of the Salahudin
province, was leading the three-member delegation which was
stopped and kidnapped on Friday near Latifiyah, about 60
kilometers (40 miles) south of Baghdad, said Hamad Hummoud,
the Tikrit-based governor of Salahudin.
They were to meet Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's
most prominent Shiite leader, in the holy city of Najaf to
discuss national elections scheduled for Dec. 30.
The head of the municipal council in Tikrit, Ali
al-Ghalib, and Dr. Amir al-Joubori, the dean assistant of
the Law College of Tikrit University, were among the
kidnapped, Hummoud said.