Bomber kills 26 Shiites in cafe

An Oil Ministry official was also kidnapped while leaving work.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A suicide bomber detonated explosives Sunday inside a cafe packed with Shiites in northern Iraq, killing 26 people and injuring 22, an Iraqi general said. Gunmen seized a top Oil Ministry official, the second major kidnapping in two days.
The U.S. military said an American soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in south Baghdad. No further details were released.
In the south, a British soldier was killed and another wounded during a raid against a "terrorist suspect" in Basra, the British military said. British troops arrested a top Shiite militia leader in the city, Iraqi police said, but it was unclear if the two events were linked.
The suicide attack occurred about 8:30 p.m. in the outdoor market in Tuz Khormato, a mostly Turkomen city 130 miles north of Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin said.
The powerful blast collapsed the ceiling of the one-story cafe, burying many of the victims, witnesses said. Hours afterward, rescuers were still sifting through the debris looking for the dead or injured.
One of Iraq's main ethnic groups, Turkomen follow both the Sunni and Shiite traditions of Islam. Amin said Shiites favored the cafe because it was near a Shiite mosque. But friction exists among Iraq's Turkomen and Kurdish populations, and the motive for the attack was unclear.
Kidnapping
In Baghdad, gunmen seized Adel Kazzaz, director of the North Oil Co., shortly after he left the Oil Ministry in eastern Baghdad, ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said. They beat his bodyguards and whisked him away, Jihad said.
The government-owned North Oil Co. runs Iraq's oil fields around the northern city of Kirkuk, and Kazzaz was in the capital for a meeting with ministry officials.
The high-profile kidnapping came one day after gunmen abducted the head of Iraq's National Olympic Committee and 30 other people.
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