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Iraqi police: French engineer kidnapped
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-05 17:11
Gunmen have abducted a French engineer in western Baghdad, Iraqi police said
Monday, adding to a wave of recent kidnappings of Westerners.
The kidnappers surrounded the Frenchman in three cars as he was driving from
a house in the wealthy Mansour district of Baghdad to his work the Risafa Water
Plant, in the center of the capital, police Capt. Qassim Hussein said.
The man worked for a French company that had a contract with the Eastern
Baghdad Water Company to work on a sewage project, police said. No other details
were immediately available.
Phone calls to the French embassy in Baghdad were not answered; the French
foreign ministry in Paris had no immediate information.
Four Westerners were taken hostage in Baghdad last week: Norman Kember, a
74-year-old from Britain; Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Va.; and Canadians James
Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32. The four members of the Christian
Peacemaker Teams were seized by the previously unknown Swords of Righteousness
Brigade.
The kidnappers have threatened to kill the hostages if Iraqi prisoners are
not released from American and Iraqi jails by Thursday, Al-Jazeera reported.
In Germany, meanwhile, Chancellor Angela Merkel and others pressed for the
release of Susanne Osthoff, an aid worker kidnapped in Iraq on Nov. 25 along
with her driver.
In an appeal published by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Merkel said the
government "is doing everything it can to save the lives of Susanne Osthoff and
her companion," an Iraqi driver.
Her kidnappers threatened to kill Osthoff, 43, unless Germany stops
cooperating with the Iraqi government.
The magazines Der Spiegel and Focus reported over the weekend that their
ultimatum expired early Friday. The government refused to comment on those
reports.
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