Baghdad, Iraq ? Gunmen abducted a top Iraqi basketball official and a blind athletic coach, both Sunnis, on Wednesday, a day after U.S. and Iraqi forces lifted a blockade on Baghdad’s Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City.

The attack took place at a youth club on relatively prosperous Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad near the Sadr City district, which is controlled by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. The militia has been linked to scores of abductions and torture killings of Sunnis.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered military roadblocks dismantled Tuesday around the sprawling slum of 2.5 million. Al-Maliki acted under pressure from al-Sadr, whose political faction is a key part of the governing coalition.

Athletes and sports officials have increasingly become targets of threats, kidnappings and assassination attempts, with an Iraqi international soccer referee seized just last month. The kidnappers reportedly demanded a $200,000 ransom.

Wednesday’s attack on the coaches began when men in four SUVs drove up to the youth club. They seized basketball federation chief Khalid Nejim, who also was a coach for the national basketball team, and Issam Khalef, who coached blind athletes.

While Nejim, 50, resisted the abductors, Khalef, who is blind and also serves as the captain for his goalball team, went quietly, said Qahtan al-Namei, chief of Iraq’s Paralympics Federation.

Twelve people were in the club at the time, al-Namei said, but it appeared only the coaches were taken because they were Sunnis, while the rest were Shiites.

Despite the abductions, al-Namei said the team was determined to participate in a tournament for disabled athletes in Malaysia this month. Goalball is played by blind or visually impaired athletes using a ball that has bells inside that is thrown toward goals on a court.

Throughout the country at least 23 people were killed Wednesday. And north of Baghdad, which has become the main battlefield in Iraq’s relentless sectarian struggle, police searched for 40 Shiites seized Tuesday on a dangerous stretch of road in a region with a mixed Shiite-Sunni population.

A witness said the Shiites were taken by men near Tarmiyah, where cars were slowed by backed-up traffic. Unarmed men went along the row of vehicles demanding to see identification cards as armed men stood nearby, just out of sight of U.S. soldiers who were disarming a roadside bomb.

The witness, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, said the men appeared to be picking out specific people, but allowed him and other Sunni travelers to proceed.

The U.S. military reported the deaths of two service members on Tuesday in Anbar province, an insurgent stronghold. A total of 105 American service members died in Iraq in October, the fourth deadliest month since the Iraq war began in March 2003.