- A Briton and two Americans became the latest foreigners
to be kidnapped in Iraq yesterday when gunmen burst into their house in
central Baghdad and dragged them off into a van.
-
- The three were seized early yesterday from a house in
Mansour, an affluent suburb where several embassies and foreign companies
are based.
-
- The latest kidnappings add to a sense of growing
insecurity
prompted by months of violence in Iraq and come as a US government security
analysis showed that Washington is gloomy about Iraq's stability.
-
- The security memo, the National Intelligence Estimate,
which is based on a compilation of views from various intelligence
agencies,
says that the prospects for Iraq's immediate future range from a tenuous
political, economic and security situation at best, to all-out civil war
at worst.
-
- Meanwhile, even Republican senators branded the
administration's
reconstruction efforts "beyond pitiful" after the White House
sought to divert $3bn (£1.67bn) earmarked for reconstruction to
bolster
security. The Bush administration dismissed the critics as "pessimists
and hand-wringers".
-
- President George Bush yesterday also attempted to deflect
the criticism of the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, who described the
war in Iraq as illegal.
-
- Speaking at a rally in St Cloud, Minnesota, Mr Bush said:
"The UN looked at the same intelligence that I looked at. They
concluded
that Saddam Hussein was a threat and they voted by 15 to zero in the
security
council for Saddam Hussein to disclose, disarm or face serious
consequences.
I believe that when bodies say something they better mean it."
-
- US officials last night confirmed that the three missing
men were civilians working for Gulf Services Company, a Middle East-based
construction firm. The two Americans were named as Jack Hensley and Eugene
"Jack" Armstrong.
-
- "Unknown gunmen" had seized them from their
residence in Mansour along with a British subject, the officials
said.
-
- "The US government is using all available means
to locate them. The Iraqi government is also fully assisting," said
Vicki Stein, a spokeswoman for the US embassy in Baghdad. A British
diplomat
in Baghdad was unable to confirm any details.
-
- Witnesses said that a group of men had pulled up outside
the house early yesterday in a van and another vehicle and waited.
-
- "At 6am the power failed in our road. Two of the
foreigners left their house and went into the street to start the
generator,"
said Bahar Salim, a 19-year-old student who lives nearby.
-
- "These guys then grabbed the two foreigners. They
then went into the house and pulled out the third westerner who had been
sitting inside. No shots were fired. It was all over in minutes. I looked
inside afterwards and saw that the computer was still running," he
added.
-
- Mr Salim said the Briton and American had employed two
unarmed security guards who had vanished two days ago.
-
- Yesterday's kidnapping follows the abduction 10 days
ago of two Italian women aid workers, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta,
both 29, who were seized from their Baghdad offices in daylight by an armed
gang. Their kidnapping sparked panic among the dwindling number of foreign
journalists and diplomats still in Iraq.
-
- Two French journalists taken hostage last month are
unaccounted
for. In an ominous development, French diplomats yesterday collected the
reporters' belongings from their Baghdad hotel.
-
- Last night, Iraqi police said they had found a corpse
north of Baghdad believed to be that of a western man dead for some
days.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1306725,00.html
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