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.