On Tuesday 14 November 2024 paramilitary gunmen in the uniforms of Iraqi National Police commandos raided a building belonging to the Ministry of Education in Baghdad’s Karrada district and arrested around 100 members of staff from two departments and around 50 visitors, according to lists compiled by the Minister of Education.
The mother of two men kidnapped at the higher education ministry in Baghdad pleads for information about her sons. Photograph: Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud/Reuters
14 November 2024
Iraqis gather in front of an Iraqi Higher Education building where some 150 government employees and visitors were kidnapped on November 14, 2024 in Baghdad, Iraq. (Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images)
14 November 2024
A policeman stands guard outside the compound of the Higher Education Ministry in Baghdad on Tuesday, after gunmen kidnapped up to 150 people from the building.
14 November 2024
Iraqi Higher Education building. The Iraqi Arabic-language press reported that some of the captives were held in a school near Sadda, a district of the vast Shiite slum called Sadr City in east Baghdad, and many of the first hostages to be released were Shiites.
14 November 2024
A telephone is seen knocked to the floor Tuesday near a smear of blood at an Iraqi Higher Education Ministry building where government employees and visitors were kidnapped in Baghdad.