All Baghdad universities were shut this week on the orders of Abd Dhiab, the Iraqi Higher Education Minister, writes David Jobbins.

His intervention came hours after men in military-style uniforms kidnapped up to 150 men at gunpoint from the JMinistry of Higher Education and Scientific Research-Scholarships and Cultural Relations Directorate building.

Suspicion fell on the Shia Muslim-dominated security forces, and a number of senior officers are reported to be under investigation.

Human rights organisations had this week already called for urgent government action to protect academics after the apparent tit-for-tat shooting of a Baghdad University professor.

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Jassim al-Asadi, dean of the university's School of Administration and Economics, was assassinated, along with his wife and son, while driving in the north of the city on November 2.

Professor al-Asadi was from the Shia community, and his murder came three days after unknown assailants shot and killed Issam al-Rawi, a professor of geography at the university's earth sciences department.

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Professor al-Rawi, head of the Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, was a Sunni.

At least 181 academics have been killed since the 2003 invasion and a further 85 have been kidnapped or have escaped murder attempts. There are about 19,000 university academics in the country.

Professor al-Rawi had said he believed assassins were targeting well-known scholars in an attempt to slow reconstruction by driving them into exile.

The New York-based organisation Scholars at Risk this week reiterated calls for international agencies to improve security for the Iraqi higher education sector.

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The Brussels Tribunal lists more than 300 academic victims of the violence.

Of these, more than three quarters were killed.