Two Italian aid workers kidnapped in Baghdad

Two Italian women aid workers and two Iraqis were kidnapped in broad daylight in central Baghdad yesterday in a brazen raid that will alarm foreigners already edgy from widespread kidnappings.

Witnesses said 20 men armed with AK-47 assault rifles and pistols with silencers stopped vehicles in a busy commercial area of the Iraqi capital and raided a building housing the humanitarian organisation Bridge to Baghdad.

They seized Italians Simona Pari and Simona Torretta and the two Iraqis, a male employee of Bridge to Baghdad and a woman who worked for another Italian organisation Intersos.

Gunmen dragged the Iraqi woman away by her hair. "She was screaming," said a witness, who declined to be named.

"It appeared it was totally professional. It appeared they knew exactly who they wanted to abduct," said another person, who saw the kidnappings in a side street off a busy square.

Italy has about 2,700 troops, the third largest contingent, serving with US-led forces in Iraq and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's pro-US government has refused to bow to guerilla demands that they should be withdrawn.

Guerillas kidnapped and killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni last month as he travelled to the southern city of Najaf. In April, kidnappers killed Italian security guard Fabrizio Quattrocchi.

Jean-Dominique Bunel, an official from a committee that groups together aid groups in Iraq, said he saw two well-dressed men with guns enter the Bridge to Baghdad building and take away the hostages.

"The guards were unarmed and they did nothing," he said. "We will all work for their release and have confidence. We have already contacted prominent people, religious authorities."

The Italian women were involved in an initiative designed to boost school attendance in Basra and Baghdad - including the capital's Sadr City slums, home to millions of Shi'ites.

The bold nature of the abductions raised the stakes in kidnappings that have gripped Iraq since April.

Nationals from more than two dozen countries have been kidnapped as guerillas try to force foreign troops and firms to leave Iraq. More than 20 foreign hostages have been killed.

The latest abductions are likely to fuel uncertainty over fate of two French journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, still held hostage despite intense diplomatic efforts to free them.

A statement posted on the internet on Monday in the name of the Islamic Army in Iraq demanded a $5 million ransom for the two journalists within 48 hours.

The group said had it had planned to free the men but attacks by American troops had prevented the release.

In the latest violence in Iraq, 24 Iraqi militants and a US soldier were killed in clashes in the Sadr City slums. The clashes threatened to wreck a ceasefire called by Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has his power base in Sadr City and has been involved in a long-running standoff with US forces.

Sadr City was not included in a peace deal which ended three weeks of fighting in August in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf between US and Iraqi troops and fighters loyal to Sadr.

Sadr aides said last week the cleric intended to field candidates in elections due in January, campaigning on a platform calling for the withdrawal of US forces.

In another incident, guerillas killed a US soldier in western Baghdad, the US military said.

The latest US casualties pushed the official American death toll to 994 since the US-led invasion in March last year to topple Saddam Hussein.

Guerillas ambushed the car of Baghdad's Iraqi governor yesterday, opening fire and then detonating a roadside bomb as his convoy drove past.

He was unhurt but an Iraqi in another car was killed.

In the northern city of Mosul, the son of the governor was shot dead by guerillas, hospital sources said.