A roadside bomb exploded near a convoy carrying Iraq's minister of state Monday, narrowly missing him but wounding two of his bodyguards.

The attack came one day after suspected Sunni Muslim insurgents kidnapped another cabinet minister, Deputy Health Minister Ammar al-Saffar, a Shi'ite, from his home in northern Baghdad, the Iraqi army and police reported. They said the gunmen wore police uniforms and arrived in seven vehicles to abduct al-Saffar, who was believed to be the senior-most government official ever abducted in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

Minister of State Mohammed Abbas Auraibi, a member of Iraq's Shi'ite majority, said the roadside bomb exploded at about 9:30 AM Monday as his convoy was driving on a highway in eastern Baghdad.

"I was returning from an official visit to Amarah when our convoy was attacked," he said in a telephone interview. "Thank God the two guards were only slightly injured."

Amarah is a mostly Shi'ite city 320 kilometers southeast of Baghdad.

Al-Saffar was snatched on Sunday, nearly a week after dozens of suspected Shi'ite militia gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped scores of people from a Ministry of Higher Education office in Baghdad. That ministry is predominantly Sunni.

For the second time in two days, coalition forces raided Sadr City in Baghdad Monday. The stronghold of a Shi'ite militia is suspected of having carried out the mass kidnapping at the ministry.

Last Tuesday, gunmen dressed in Interior Ministry commando uniforms abducted about 150 men from the central Baghdad office that handles academic grants and exchanges. The men were handcuffed and driven away in about 20 pickup trucks. About half were released that night and the next day, a government minister said.

A Sunni who said he was among the hostages freed claimed the kidnappers broke his arm. He said he saw them kill at least three hostages after taking them to empty houses in the Sadr City Shi'ite slum.

The mass kidnapping was widely believed to have been the work of the Mahdi Army, the heavily armed militia of al-Sadr, the anti-American Shi'ite cleric.

(China Daily November 21, 2006)