Iraq: 35 police academy aspirants abducted

Thirty-five Iraqi men are missing after being abducted following failed bids to be accepted into a police-training academy, police said.

Thirty-five Iraqi men are missing after being abducted following failed bids to be accepted into a police-training academy, police said.

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The aspiring police trainees were seized on Monday when their bus was stopped about 50 kilometres north of Baghdad after leaving the Iraqi capital bound for the city of Samarra, said Col Malik al-Khezraji.

The missing men travelled to Baghdad among a group of about 230 Iraqis trying to enter a police-training academy, but were not admitted and were heading home when they were stopped by masked assailants.

Police said they found out about the abduction after a man fled the bus and raised the alarm. The whereabouts of the missing men was not immediately known.

Iraqi police and recruits have been routinely targeted by insurgents determined to destroy Iraq's post-Saddam Hussein reconstruction process.