Gunmen abducted a man who coached blind athletes and the head of Iraq's national basketball federation on Wednesday, police said, the latest in a wave of kidnappings targeting sports figures.

Lt. Ali Mohsin said men driving four SUVs drove up to a youth club on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad Wednesday afternoon, and seized Khalid Nejim, the basketball federation chief who also was a coach for the national basketball team, and Issam Khalef, who coached blind athletes.

While Nejim, 50, who is sighted, resisted the abductors, Khalef, who is blind and also serves as the team captain, went with his captors quietly, said Qahtan al-Namei, chief of Iraq's Paralympics Federation.

Twelve people were in the club at the time of the abductions, include the coaches, seven blind players, a guard who was quickly disarmed, an assistant and a driver, al-Namei said.

He said it appeared only the coaches were taken because they were Sunnis, while the rest were Shiite. He said the kidnappers, who carried automatic weapons and wore no masks, had not demanded a ransom or otherwise contacted the federation.

"There is a distinct possibility that this was simply an act of violence targeting Iraqi sports," al-Namei said.

Despite the abductions, al-Namei said the team was still determined to participate in the FESPIC Games for disabled athletes in Malaysia later this month. Bell ball uses a ball with a bell inside to allow blind players to locate it by hearing and score goals.

Palestine Street is a relatively prosperous thoroughfare that leads directly into the Shiite slum of Sadr City, a stronghold of hardline anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia has been linked to scores of abductions and torture killings of Sunnis.

In addition, athletes and sports officials have also become targets of threats, kidnappings and assassination attempts, with an Iraqi international soccer referee kidnapped just last month as he left the soccer association's offices. The kidnappers reportedly demanded a $200,000 ransom, although it wasn't known if the money was ever paid.

Days earlier, gunmen killed a 37-year-old former Iraqi national volleyball player, Naseer Shamil, in his shop in Baghdad, while 22-year-old Ghanim Ghudayer, a popular Iraqi soccer player who was a member of the country's Olympic team was kidnapped in September. He has not been heard from since.

In July, Iraq's national soccer coach, Akram Ahmed Salman, resigned after receiving death threats against him and his family.

That came shortly after gunmen kidnapped the chairman of Iraq's National Olympic Committee and at least 30 other officials, including the presidents of the tae kwon do and boxing federations, in a bold daylight raid on a sports conference in the heart of Baghdad. Iraq's national wrestling coach, a Sunni, was killed around the same time in a Shiite district of Baghdad.