An extremist Sunni militant group, linked to the al-Qaida group in Iraq, said on Friday it had kidnapped 18 employees of the Shiite-led interior ministry and threatened to kill them to avenge the alleged rape of an Iraqi woman.

"Lions from the Islamic state in Iraq succeeded in arresting 18 members of the interior ministry in Diyala in response to what these apostates have done in fighting the Sunnis, and one of their recent act is the rape of our sister in religion," the group said in an internet statement.

The statement demanded the government to hand over the accused officers to the militants and to release all the women detained in the governmental prisons.

However, the authenticity of the statement has not been independently verified.

Last month, a 20-year-old woman from western Baghdad accused three Iraqi policemen of sexually assaulting her, but the Iraqi government denied the accusation.

On Feb. 22, four Iraqi soldiers have been arrested for raping an ethnic Turkoman woman in the town of Tal Afar, some 400 km north of Baghdad.

Rape victims in the conservative Iraqi society rarely go to publicity because they fear public scorn and humiliation.

Source: Xinhua