The Combat Operator

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen abducted an Iranian diplomat in the chaotic city of Peshawar in Pakistan’s northwest Thursday, a day after the assassination of an American aid official there.

The diplomat, Hesmatollah Atharzadeh, who was the commercial counselor at the Iranian consulate, was leaving his house in the suburb of Hayatabad when the gunmen attacked, the police said. His driver also was killed.

The kidnapping of the Iranian comes after a series of suicide bombings by Taliban militants in Peshawar in the last few months. The police said they suspected Islamic militants were involved in the killing of the American aid worker, Stephen D. Vance.

On Tuesday night, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the city’s main stadium after the closing ceremony of interprovincial games, the first such event after a new secular provincial government lifted the ban on sports imposed by a coalition of religious parties.

According to police accounts, Mr. Atharzadeh was snatched when he was on his way to work. The attackers sprayed bullets at the car and dragged the diplomat away, the police said.

An Afghan diplomat, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, was kidnapped from Hayatabad two months ago, and is still missing. The suburb of Hayatabad abuts the Khyber region of the Federally Administered Tribal Area, and is the first point of entry for militants coming from the tribal area into Peshawar.

Kidnappings in Hayatabad have become so frequent in the last year that many well-to-do Pakistanis who lived in substantial homes there have fled, leaving the area to diplomats and middle-class families.

Iran maintains a consulate in Peshawar so that it can organize pilgrimages to Iran for Pakistani Shia from Kurram in the tribal region. There is also considerable trade between Iran and the northwestern city.

The Taliban and their Al Qaeda supporters control much of the tribal region adjacent to Peshawar and the militants have tightened their grip on the city, terrorizing residents but stopping short of attempting a takeover.

Peshawar is the headquarters of the 11th Corps of the Pakistani Army. The provincial police force has been trying to battle the militants in the towns around Peshawar by organizing operations backed by helicopter gunships.

But the Taliban, backed by criminal gangs, appear to have superior intelligence that enables them to track the movements of politicians, diplomats and wealthy Pakistanis.

In the wake of the assassination of Mr. Vance Wednesday, some American aid workers were evacuated from the city and flown back to the United States.

BAGHDAD — Two American soldiers were killed and six others were wounded by an Iraqi soldier in an attack in the northern city of Mosul on Wednesday, according to the United States military, Iraqi security officials and witnesses. The shooter was immediately killed by other American soldiers, they added.

In Baghdad, at least 11 Iraqis were killed and 60 others were wounded in a new spate of attacks, witnesses and police officials said. The violence erupted just two days after attacks that killed 28 Iraqis in the capital, in the bloodiest day since June.

While the deaths of the American soldiers were confirmed by the United States military, the circumstances remained in dispute.

Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, commander of American troops in northern Iraq, said it began when two platoons of American soldiers stopped at a combat outpost staffed by Iraqi soldiers. Two American lieutenants went inside to an office to speak with an Iraqi captain while soldiers from both sides waited outside.

Suddenly, General Hertling said, an Iraqi soldier with an AK-47 that was equipped with a 70-round drum walked up to the group of soldiers, said something to an Iraqi soldier and then shot one American soldier in the head and another in the stomach. He then began spraying bullets in all directions, the general said, at which point the Americans shot him dead. One American soldier died on the spot, and the other later died from his wounds.

General Hertling said the episode remained under investigation by both sides. He declined to say what the Iraqi assailant had said before he began shooting.

The head of police operations in Mosul, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim al-Jubouri, said the episode was set off by a quarrel between an American and an Iraqi soldier. This was confirmed by a senior official in the Ministry of Defense and an officer in the Nineveh Operations Command, which oversees all Iraqi forces operating in Mosul and is advised by the American military.

An Iraqi Army officer and two soldiers who witnessed the attack provided a detailed account on the condition of anonymity, for fear of retribution from their commanders.

They said an American military patrol stopped on Wednesday afternoon to inspect a post staffed by Iraqi soldiers in the predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood of Zanjili, a notoriously violent part of Mosul.

A heated argument ensued between one of the American soldiers and an Iraqi soldier identified as Barzan Mohammed Abdullah, prompting the American to curse at the Iraqi, spit in his face and slap him, the Iraqis said. The Iraqi soldier then opened fire on the Americans, they said, and other American soldiers responded with a barrage of gunfire at the Iraqi.

This was not the first time that an Iraqi soldier had turned his gun on an American or British soldier. The most recent was last December, also in Mosul, when two American soldiers were killed and three were wounded by an Iraqi soldier who opened fire while on patrol with them.

Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh Province have been the focus of increased attention from the United States and Iraqi military recently. There are about 5,000 American soldiers stationed in the province, and about 600 additional soldiers were recently sent to Mosul from Diyala Province to take part in a new military operation.

Despite the increased military presence, Mosul is home to a mix of Sunni insurgents linked to the former regime of Saddam Hussein and to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an insurgent group that American intelligence agencies say is led by foreigners.

Mosul was also the scene of sectarian killings on Wednesday that underscored the serious tensions that continued to plague the city. In that episode, two Iraqi Christian women were killed and their mother was seriously wounded, police and security officials said.

Lamia Subaih Daoud, a local government employee in her 30s, was waiting outside her home in the northern neighborhood of Qahira for a bus to take her to work. Three gunmen in a gray vehicle pulled up and shot her in the head and chest.

They then stormed the house and gunned down Ms. Daoud’s sister, who was 23, in the same fashion. The gunmen made their way to the kitchen and shot the mother of the women.

Ms. Daoud’s three children, ages 2 to 5, were asleep at the time in their room and survived the attack.

The killings come less than two weeks after church leaders and the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki urged more than 2,000 refugee Christian families to return to the city under a government guarantee of their safety. The refugees had fled before a wave of attacks against Christians in Mosul in September and October.

It is estimated by church leaders that 400 to 700 families have returned so far from the relative safety of the Nineveh Plain, a predominantly Christian stretch of villages northeast of the city protected by forces from the neighboring Kurdistan region.

Nineveh Province is also the scene of escalating tensions between the central government and the semiautonomous Kurdistan region. In what is viewed by many as a move to hem in Kurdish influence in northern Iraq, Mr. Maliki has been courting Sunni Arab nationalists and tribal leaders in Nineveh and other parts of the north. The nationalists and tribal leaders are traditionally hostile to Kurds and their claims to disputed territories.

In response, the deputy speaker of Iraq’s Parliament, Aref Tayfour, a Kurd, issued a statement objecting to Mr. Maliki’s plans, which involve forming so-called tribal support councils in Mosul and Kirkuk that would answer to the central government. He called them “illegal and unconstitutional” and warned that they would “enflame sectarian and ethnic discord.” The two main Kurdish parties, Mr. Maliki’s coalition partners in government, issued a similar statement on Tuesday.

Mr. Maliki’s office responded with a counterstatement on Wednesday describing the Kurdish position as “regrettable,” insisting that these councils were “vital for the preservation of security and order.”

In attacks on Wednesday in Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in a parking lot in a busy commercial district. Witnesses said a joint American and Iraqi patrol had driven by just minutes before the explosion. Four people were killed in the attack, and 14 were wounded.

In another attack, a bomb in a parked car exploded near a police patrol in eastern Baghdad, and a roadside bomb blew up shortly afterward among the people who had gathered at the scene. That attack killed five people and wounded 29, according to the national police and witnesses.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Another major city in Somalia fell without a shot to Islamist insurgents on Wednesday, with Islamist guerrilla fighters seizing the strategic port of Merka, residents and Somali officials said.

The Islamists are now in control of a large and rapidly growing swath of south-central Somalia, and the weak transitional government seems too paralyzed by infighting to do much about it.

The government, which is recognized internationally and backed by Ethiopian troops, has repeatedly urged the United Nations to send in peacekeepers to quell the insurgency and stabilize the country. But with the continuing conflicts in eastern Congo and the Darfur region of Sudan, another major international peacekeeping effort in the region seems unlikely at the moment.

Hundreds of fighters rolled into Merka around 8 a.m. on Wednesday in heavily armed pickup trucks, meeting no resistance because government-allied militias had fled the night before, according to residents. Merka is only 60 miles south of Mogadishu, Somalia’s bullet-pocked capital, and Somali officials warned that the Islamists were now planning to lay siege to Mogadishu.

“We know their grand plan,” said Abdi Awaleh Jama, an ambassador at large for the transitional federal government. “But we’re not going to run away. We’re going to fight with whatever we have.” But, he added, “we need help — urgently.”

The Islamists have been steadily gobbling up territory — Merka, Kismayu, Bulo Marer, El Dheer and Qoryooley — and now control many strategic areas across the country.

They seem to be fast approaching Mogadishu, from the north and from the south. In some areas, they have begun imposing a strict interpretation of Islamic law, even stoning to death a young Somali who said she had been raped. The Islamists convicted her last month of adultery. United Nations officials said she may have been as young as 13.

The American government has accused the Islamists of sheltering terrorists from Al Qaeda responsible for killing Americans.

But many Somalis are so eager for law and order that they are embracing the Islamists. On Wednesday, residents in Merka said they poured into the streets to welcome the Islamist gunmen.

“I am very happy with them,” said Axmed Warfaa, an elder in the town. “I am Muslim, and our religion is fair.”

The Islamist fighters, part of a group called the Shabab, which the Bush administration has designated a terrorist organization, quickly took over Merka’s police station and government buildings, residents said.

The fighters seemed organized, with many wearing green uniforms. They addressed a crowd that gathered in one of Merka’s public squares, telling people to stay calm and to put aside clan differences and unite under the banner of Islam, according to accounts from residents. Merka’s previous officials fled to a suburb of Mogadishu.

In Mogadishu, the transitional government seems to be embroiled in another round of infighting. Officials allied with the president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, are accusing the prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, of secretly helping the Islamists. Some of the president’s men have gone as far as to say that Ethiopian forces, which have been in Somalia for almost two years helping to prop up the government, now work with the insurgents.

Ethiopian officials are blaming Somalia’s leaders for not making peace with Islamist clerics, who enjoy a large degree of popular support. When the Islamists briefly ruled much of Somalia in 2006, many Somalis considered that period the most peaceful era since the central government imploded in 1991.

The Ethiopians, with American help, overthrew the Islamists in 2006, and an intense guerrilla war has raged ever since, with thousands of civilians killed.

The Ethiopians seem to be running out of patience. They recently indicated they would withdraw their troops soon, a move that many Somalis believe would spell the end of the government.

“Yes, it’s bad,” Mr. Abdi said about the fall of Merka and the overall status of the government. “These Islamists are terrorists. The American Congress and administration have to wake up. We have a common interest in defeating them.”

Complicating matters is the fact that Merka has been home to a major United Nations operation to bring in food. Somalia has been on the brink of a famine for much of the past year, because of drought, conflict-related displacement and high global food prices. Millions of people need emergency rations to survive.

United Nations officials said on Wednesday that Merka’s port was crucial to keeping people alive. More than 24 million pounds of food passed through the port in October alone, feeding as many as 850,000 people.

Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, said local United Nations employees in Merka were trying to speak to the new Islamist authorities about continuing the life-saving operations. The United Nations does work in several other areas in Somalia controlled by the Islamists. In the past, United Nations officials have said they faced less interference in some Islamist areas than in those under nominal government control. Yet Islamist insurgents have been widely blamed for assassinations of aid workers.