Masked men kidnap 18 Turkish construction workers in Baghdad

Masked men in military uniforms kidnapped 18 Turkish employees of an Ankara-based construction company in Baghdad Wednesday, bundling them into several SUVs and speeding away. Officials said the 18 are employed by Nurol Insaat, a Turkish construction company contracted to build a sports complex in the sprawling Shiite district of Sadr City. The kidnappers stormed the construction site, where the workers were sleeping in caravans, breaking down doors and disarming the guards before taking the workers away.

The Iraqi authorities for the time being do not have information on how the incident occurred or who captured them.

Turkey Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus

The Iraqi officials said an Iraqi national was kidnapped along with the Turks. Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Tanju Bilgic said those kidnapped included 14 workers, three engineers and one accountant. While kidnapping for ransom has continued, abductions on the scale seen Wednesday have been almost unheard of in the past few years. The style and scale of Wednesday’s kidnapping harkened back to the sectarian violence in Baghdad in 2006 and 2007, when Sunni and Shiite militants kidnapped followers of the other sect.

World Baghdad kidnap