“Several” Americans have been kidnapped in Iraq, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad confirmed to the BBC on Monday. The State Department has also said that it was aware of the reports and working with Iraqi authorities to locate the missing individuals.
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A senior security official in Baghdad told CNN that the contractors went missing in Iraq two days ago.
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. Kidnappings in Iraq have been carried out by ISIS, Shiite militias and criminal gangs often demanding ransom payments or seeking to resolve workplace disputes. “Iraqi security forces are working very hard now to locate them”.
The three were abducted in Dora, a mixed neighborhood that is home to both Shiites and Sunnis.
A resident of the apartment building where the Americans were reportedly seized said that they were taken from a second-story apartment that he described as well-known as a brothel.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the abductions and the identities and employment of the victims were unclear.
An attack on a Baghdad shopping centre last week, claimed by so-called Islamic State militants, brought to an end a relative lull in violence that had seen no major bloodshed in the city in months. The two most powerful Shiite militias in Baghdad are Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) and the Hezbollah Brigades.
Their translator has also been kidnapped.
Walsh said it was possible that the men “could fall into the hands of pro-Iranian militia”.
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The US is leading a coalition of countries that have bombed thousands of IS targets in Iraq and Syria and which are providing training to Baghdad’s forces. But given where the men were taken – the neighborhood of Dora, occupied by Iraq’s majority Shia Islam branch – O’Shea said the kidnappers were most likely Shia. But a series of alleged abuses and kidnappings by these forces has cast doubt on the prime minister’s capacity to police his own police.
