Iraq says seeking release of kidnapped Britons

[maddezmom]

Source: Reuters

Reuters - 7 minutes agoBAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's government said on Thursday it was working closely with the British authorities to secure the release of five Britons kidnapped from a government building in Baghdad in a raid blamed on a Shi'ite militia.

"The Iraqi government has undertaken urgent measures to determine the facts and locate the kidnappers. It is in contact with the British authorities over any developments," the government said in a statement.

A special military unit has been set up to help hunt for the Britons -- a computer expert and his four bodyguards who were snatched on Tuesday from inside a Finance Ministry building by dozens of gunmen wearing police uniforms.

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A senior Finance Ministry official said the building's guards were being questioned over the raid, in which no shots were fired. Investigators will be trying to establish how the gunmen knew the Britons were in the building.

One of the guards said he had been briefly detained for questioning and then released. He said other colleagues were still being held.

The guard, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters the gunmen had been led by a man in a police major's uniform who spoke to the hostages in fluent English. He said he did not recognise the gunmen's weapons but they were not AK-47s, the standard-issue weapon for Iraq's security forces.



Read more: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070531/tpl-uk-iraq-britons-43a8d4f.html