‘ 3 US men seized from suspicious flat in Baghdad’

Baghdad, Jan. 18: Three American nationals missing in Iraq were kidnapped from a “suspicious apartment” in Baghdad, a spokesman for the security command responsible for the capital said on Monday.

“Three people carrying American nationality were kidnapped while they were in Dura... Inside a suspicious apartment,” the spokesman said in a statement.

“Security forces have begun searching for them,” the spokesman said.

A police colonel said on condition of anonymity that an Iraqi translator took the Americans for “drinking and women” at an apartment in the Dura area. Militiamen “attacked the place”, the colonel said, and “they were kidnapped from inside the apartment, not from the street.”

The colonel and Iraq’s Parliament Speaker have said the kidnappings took place on Sunday, but other reports indicated the Americans were abducted at an earlier date.

US and Iraqi authorities were searching on Monday for the three Americans.

Kidnappers have recently seized Qataris and Turks, but it has been years since Americans were abducted, and Iraqis have suffered the most from kidnappers seeking ransoms or to settle scores.

ISIS, which overran large areas in 2014, has abducted thousands of people and carried out a slew of executions, while Shia paramilitary forces opposed to the jihadists have also carried out kidnappings and killings.

Iraqi Parliament Speaker Salim al- Juburi condemned the rise in “cases of foreigners being kidnapped in Iraq,” saying it would harm the country’s relations with other states.

“The kidnapping of the American citizens yesterday, and before them the Qatari hunters, whose fate is still unknown, without a doubt indicates the increasing work of organised gangs in Iraq,” Mr Juburi said.