A woman organization working for the freedom of woman in Iraq announced yesterday that more than 400 Iraqi women were kidnapped, raped or sold since the collapse of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in April. Yanar Muhammad, who supervises this organization, said in press statements during a demonstration at al Fardous street in the downtown of Baghdad that "since the entry of the coalition forces to Iraq, this country is facing an unprecedented wave of violence against women and that some 400 of them were kidnapped, raped or sometimes sold." She explained that professional gangs are selling, raping or kidnapping women in order to get financial ransom. She stressed that women in the streets are exposed to insulting sexual harassment and threats of kidnapping "and that a state of real fear exists among women with many of them avoid getting out of their houses." The women organization accused the American forces of keeping a blind eye over what is taking place and stressed that, uselessly, it talked to the transitional governing council and the American administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer and asked for enhancing security and imposing penalty of sexual harassment.