Baghdad, Iraq ? The security guard at the Oil Ministry Cultural Center was bending down to kneel for midday prayer Saturday when someone behind him said, “Turn around and do not move.”

The guard, Yasin Ibrahim Mustafa, turned to face the barrel of an AK-47, held by a man wearing an Iraqi police commando uniform. The man told Mustafa to stay in the guard room, then walked into the center in downtown Baghdad and joined dozens of other gunmen in the kidnapping of the head of Iraq’s Olympic Committee and more than 30 other people attending a sports conference, police and witnesses said.

The daytime abduction was the latest in a series of mass kidnappings in Iraq, including the capture of 15 members of the country’s tae kwon do team in May. The raid worsened fears that gunmen impersonating or collaborating with Iraqi security forces are operating freely in the capital. When the kidnappers entered the cultural center Saturday, the bodyguards for the Olympic officials saluted them, assuming they were legitimate police officers, Mustafa and other security guards said.

Police involvement denied

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani denied police were involved in the kidnapping.

Relatives of an Internet cafe owner killed in his shop mourn Saturday outside of the main hospital in Kirkuk, Iraq. A bomb was detonated in the cafe, killing two people, including the shop's owner.

The gunmen arrived at the center in 10 to 12 vehicles, including several white sport utility vehicles, burst into the conference center, handcuffed participants, marched them into the vehicles and sped away, according to guards and other Iraqi sports officials. The victims included the chairman of the Olympic Committee, Ahmed al-Hijiya, as well as the president of the tae kwon do federation, several guards and journalists covering the conference, authorities said. Seven bodyguards were handcuffed to one another and left behind in the courtyard of the cultural center, guards said.

“We were on the edge of death,” said Mustafa, 63, speaking through the metal gate of the cultural center. “We almost died.”

Gunfire exchanged

Mohanned Moied, an Olympic Committee guard who was briefed on the kidnapping by people at the conference, said al-Hijiya’s guards and the kidnappers exchanged gunfire inside the building, and that one of the guards was killed and two others were wounded.

In recent months, sports teams and officials have been targets in the ongoing violence engulfing Iraq. The tae kwon do team members were kidnapped May 17 while driving across western Iraq after a competition in Jordan. Later that month, gunmen killed the coach of the national tennis team and two of his players in western Baghdad. The attackers in that incident reportedly were religious extremists angry they were wearing shorts.

Two U.S. soldiers killed

Meanwhile, two U.S. servicemen were killed in separate bombings in Baghdad, the U.S. military said. One of the soldiers, a member of the 49th Military Police Brigade, was killed in the morning as he drove through the Shiite Muslim slum of Sadr City, in northeastern Baghdad. More than four hours later, a bomb killed a soldier in the southern part of the capital.

The soldiers’ names were being withheld pending notification of their families.

In central Baghdad, a car bomb targeting a police checkpoint killed five people, including two police officers, and wounded six others, said Maj. Gen. Hasan Salman of the Interior Ministry. Later in the day, two roadside bombs exploded in the Saidiya neighborhood of western Baghdad, killing three people and wounding five others, he said.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, a bomb detonated in an Internet cafe, killing two people, including the shop’s owner, the Kirkuk police said.