Iraqi troops find bodies after workers abducted

BAGHDAD, June 22 (Reuters) Iraqi soldiers today said they had found several bodies in a violent area north of Baghdad where factory workers were abducted by gunmen a day earlier.

Police and government officials offered contradictory accounts of how the abductions took place and how many people were involved.

Iraq's Industry and Minerals Ministry said initial police reports that 80 or more workers had been seized were inaccurate. Only 30 had been abducted, it said, most of whom had already been freed. But police in the area insisted today that their higher figure was correct.

''Only 30 employees were kidnapped, of whom 25 were released the same day and only five now are still being held,'' an official in the minister's office told Reuters.

An Iraqi army officer guarding the factory said his unit had found ''several'' bodies in the area. It wasn't clear if the bodies were those of the kidnapped employees.

The workers were from the state-owned Great Victory factory in the insurgent stronghold of Taji, just north of Baghdad.

Fellow employees were too afraid to speak to the media today.

Large-scale abductions of Iraqi soldiers, police and civilians have been a feature of insurgent violence in the past couple of years. Several have resulted in massacres in which those abducted have later been killed and their bodies dumped.

Reuters PR GC1637