BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi government has pulled an entire national police brigade of about 700 officers out of Baghdad because so many of its members appeared to be involved in sectarian killings, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

Removing the brigade would immediately improve security in the city, said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell IV, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad. Caldwell also said that a weekend curfew had helped reduce the number of dead Iraqis discovered throughout Baghdad this week.

Caldwell said Iraqi officials ordered the police brigade from Baghdad after 26 workers, most of them Sunni Muslims, were kidnapped Sunday from a meat-packing plant in a neighborhood the brigade was supposed to be protecting. The next day, uniformed gunmen driving what appeared to be government trucks kidnapped 14 people from a shopping district that specialized in computers.

Sunnis long have claimed that security forces laced with members of Shiite Muslim militias are responsible for many of the killings and kidnappings that have become rampant in this city. About 100 Sunnis demonstrated Wednesday in the neighborhood where the meat plant was located, carrying signs saying that the security forces should leave.