BAGHDAD, Jan. 17 -- Insurgents who have vowed to disrupt Iraq's parliamentary elections unleashed attacks Monday that stretched the breadth of Iraq, from the kidnapping of a Catholic archbishop in the north to a car bombing of a police station to mortar attacks on polling stations in Basra in the south. At least 20 people were killed, including two Marines.
In Buhruz in central Iraq, gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles attacked a minibus carrying Iraqi soldiers, killing at least seven of them and a civilian.
The Vatican demanded the release of Basile Georges Casmoussa, 66.
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In the northern town of Baiji, explosives packed in a car detonated at the gate of the police station, killing seven policemen, witnesses said. Scenes of anguish, across a street littered with burned wreckage and body parts, were met with anxious fear that violence would continue before the Jan. 30 vote.
"Damn the elections. They are just a disaster hanging over our head," said the mother of one of the slain Baiji policeman, 20-year-old Nayif Ratif. "What was the fault of my son? He was a very simple and good man. He died because of these elections."
The Catholic archbishop in the northern city of Mosul was kidnapped in what the Vatican called an "act of terrorism."
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told the Reuters news service that Pope John Paul II had received news of the kidnapping of Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa in Mosul, where insurgents have targeted churches in recent months. The spokesman demanded the immediate release of Casmoussa, 66, but gave no details of the abduction.
"The Holy See deplores this act of terrorism in the firmest manner and demands that the worthy pastor is swiftly freed unharmed," Navarro-Valls said.
Archbishop Matti Shaba, who heads the Baghdad diocese, said church officials in Mosul told him that two carloads of attackers pulled Casmoussa from his car and stuffed him in the trunk of one of their vehicles before fleeing, according to a Knight Ridder report.
Christians make up about 3 percent of Iraq's population of 25 million, with sizable communities in Mosul and Baghdad, although a large number of them have emigrated in recent years to the United States, Europe and Australia. Casmoussa is a member of the Syrian Catholic church, an ancient rite present mostly in the Middle East.
Casmoussa's kidnapping marked another turn in the tactics of the still-shadowy insurgents, who operate mainly in Sunni Muslim areas of central Iraq.
Guerrillas have posed as Iraqi policemen in carrying out assassinations and abductions, deployed car bombs almost casually, fired mortars, staged ambushes and are believed to have infiltrated the security forces.
[On Tuesday morning, a car bomb exploded in Baghdad near an office used by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an official with the group told the Reuters news agency. There was no immediate word on casualties.]
Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said in a statement released Monday that the number of attacks since December was only slightly higher than nine months earlier.
"The perception of violence that's created by television is not that way across Iraq," said Casey, whose U.S. troops will number 150,000 during the election campaign.
