Armed men seize Palestinians in Baghdad -UN

GENEVA, Jan 23 (Reuters) Seventeen Palestinians seized today by armed men from a Baghdad house rented by the UN refugee agency UNHCR have apparently been released, the agency said.

However, there were reports that another group of 13 Palestinians had been seized in another part of Baghdad, also by armed men wearing police uniforms, a UNHCR spokeswoman said.

''The UNHCR believes that the 17 have been released but we immediately heard another 13 had been arrested,'' said spokeswoman Astrid Van Genderen Stort.

In the first case, witnesses said men dressed in Iraqi security force uniforms broke into the Palestinians' apartments in a UNHCR-rented building in the Hay el Nidal area of Baghdad, breaking doors and windows, the UNHCR said.

The group was later released, the UNHCR said, quoting the wife of one of the men seized and members of a local non-governmental organisation.

The second incident followed a similar pattern, with armed men in uniform arriving in security force vehicles, the UNHCR spokeswoman said.

''It is a very worrisome situation,'' she said.

Palestinian refugees in Iraq, who total about 15,000, had become the target of increasing attacks, including kidnappings and killings, the Geneva-based agency said.

Several hundred Palestinians trying to flee the country are trapped on the Syrian border, unable either to enter Syria or return to Baghdad.

The refugees, many of whose families arrived after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, are perceived by opponents of Saddam Hussein to have had privileged treatment under the former president's rule.

Saddam was executed on December 30 for war crimes nearly four years after being removed from power by a U.S.-led coalition.

REUTERS SY ND2306