United States ‘trying to find Americans missing in Baghdad’

United States and Iraqi authorities were searching for three missing Americans said to have been kidnapped in southern Baghdad, the latest group of foreign nationals abducted in recent months.

“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 organized gangs in Iraq”, Juburi said in a statement.

It was not known whether the three were security contractors or some of the many other types of contractors now working in Iraq, officials said.

But US officials did not say how many were held or where they were seized. “They don’t want to jeopardize the investigation”, Mutlabi said.

Iraqi police set up extra checkpoints in Dora on Monday and sent out helicopter search parties.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility in Baghdad. The men were described as former Iraqi nationals who had obtained American citizenship.

Iraqi authorities are cooperating with the U.S.in the search for three missing Americans in Baghdad.

A Baghdad police colonel, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said that the Americans are employed as contractors at the Baghdad International Airport.

The apartment is well-known in southern Baghdad as a brothel and is subject to frequent raids by Shiite militias, including the Iran-backed Asa’ib ah al-Haqq, a police official and a building resident told The Washington Post.

He said that the translator was also kidnapped.

The kidnapping of the Americans comes at a time of deteriorating security in and around the Iraqi capital after months of relative calm.

It is there that the three Americans are reported to have been abducted by armed men in military uniforms, after visiting the interpreter’s house.

Mark Meudt, a spokesman for General Dynamics, referred all queries to the U.S. State Department.

American embassy in Iraq’s capital Baghad.

Iraqi special operations forces have been leading the fight against Islamic State, said O’Shea, and they had been among the best trained forces in the Arab world until the USA pullout in 2010.