Gunmen abduct two Italian aid workers in Baghdad
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-08 02:00

Gunmen abducted two Italian aid workers and two Iraqis in central Baghdad Tuesday in a brazen attack that will alarm foreigners already on edge from widespread kidnappings.

Witnesses told Reuters about 20 men with AK-47 assault rifles and pistols with silencers stopped their vehicles in broad daylight in a busy commercial area of Baghdad and raided a building housing humanitarian organization Bridge to Baghdad.

Jean Dominique Bunel, executive coordinator of the Non-Governmental Organisation Coordination committee of Iraq, provides information about the kidnapping of two Italians and two Iraqis in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday Sept. 7, 2004. [AP]

They left with Italian staffers Simona Pari and Simona Torretta and two Iraqis, a women who worked for another Italian organization Intersos and a male employee of Bridge to Baghdad.

"It appeared it was totally professional. It appeared they knew exactly who they wanted to abduct," said one witness, who declined to be named.

Gunmen dragged the Iraqi woman away by her hair. "She was screaming," a witness said.

Jean-Domique Bunel, an official from a committee that groups together aid organizations in Iraq, said he saw two well-dressed men with guns enter the building and take away the hostages.

"The guards were unarmed and they did nothing," he said.

The Italian women were involved in an aid initiative aimed at boosting school attendance in Basra and Baghdad -- including in the capital's Sadr City slums, home to thousands of Shi'ites.

An official at the Italian embassy said they had no immediate information on the kidnappings conducted on a side street just off a busy Baghdad square near a hospital and a congested avenue.

The abductions raised the stakes in kidnappings that have gripped Iraq for months, with more than 100 foreigners and Iraqis seized since April mostly outside of the capital.

Insurgents kidnapped and killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni last month as he traveled to the southern city of Najaf. In April, kidnappers killed Italian security guard Fabrizio Quattrocchi.

The latest abductions are likely to fuel uncertainty over the fate of two French journalists whose kidnappings have triggered intense diplomatic efforts to free them.

Aside from unleashing suicide bombers and shooting attacks, insurgents have carried out kidnappings in a campaign designed to drive out foreign companies and troops allied with the American military.

Targets have included about 2,700 Italian troops, the third largest in Iraq, whose staunch pro-American government has refused to cave in to guerrilla demands that they leave.

Nationals from more than two dozen countries have been kidnapped since guerrillas embarked on new tactics to force foreign troops and firms to leave Iraq. More than 20 foreign hostages have been killed.

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