BAGHDAD — Hundreds of Iraqi and U.S. troops cordoned off sections of Baghdad's Sadr City slum early today and conducted a series of raids in an apparent effort to find five British citizens abducted from a nearby government building the day before, local residents and police said.

British Embassy officials held ongoing talks today with Iraqi officials to discuss the situation, Britain's Foreign Office said.

The five men were pulled out of a Finance Ministry office by about 40 heavily armed men in police uniforms in broad daylight Tuesday and driven in a convoy of 19 four-wheel-drive vehicles toward Sadr City, according to the British Foreign Office in London and Iraqi officials in the Interior and Finance ministries.

A senior Iraqi official said the radical Shiite Mahdi Army militia was suspected in the attack.

Soon after the abduction, Iraqi forces established a special battalion of Iraqi soldiers and police officers to search for the men, said Brig. Gen. Qassim al Musawi, an Iraqi army spokesman.

"We are conducting search operations near the site where the abduction took place," he said. "Maybe today or in the coming few days, we will find them with the help of secret intelligence."

Residents of Sadr City said hundreds of American and Iraqi troops sealed off areas of the Shiite neighborhood overnight and carried out a series of arrest raids that lasted until dawn. The residents spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals for speaking to the Western media.

The U.S. military said in a statement that it had arrested five suspected militants and one suspected leader of a militant cell during early morning raids in Sadr City. Those arrested were believed part of a cell that smuggled weapons in from Iran and sent militants to Iran for training, the statement said.

The statement did not link the raid to the missing men.

Two civilians were killed and four others injured in crossfire from gun battles that broke out during one of the raids, police said. The civilians had been sleeping on their roofs in a traditional Iraqi custom to escape the brutal heat, police said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.