Bodies of 14 Interior Ministry employees, who earlier were allegedly kidnapped by a Sunni militant group, were found in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, Interior Ministry spokesman said on Friday.

"14 bodies were found Friday afternoon in Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad", Brigadier General Abdul Karim Khalaf, the ministry's director of operations, told a press conference.

Earlier in the day, an extremist Sunni militant group, linked to the al-Qaida group in Iraq, said it had kidnapped 18 employees of the Shiite-led interior ministry and threatened to kill them to avenge the alleged rape of an Iraqi woman.

"Lions from the Islamic state in Iraq succeeded in arresting 18 members of the interior ministry in Diyala in response to what these apostates have done in fighting the Sunnis, and one of the irrecent act is the rape of our sister in religion," the group said in an internet statement.

The statement demanded the government to hand over the accused officers to the militants and to release all the women detained in the governmental prisons.

Last month, a 20-year-old woman from western Baghdad accused three Iraqi policemen of sexually assaulting her, but the Iraqi government rejected the accusation.

Rape victims in the conservative Iraqi society rarely go to publicity because they fear public scorn and humiliation.

(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2007)