Frenchman taken hostage in Iraq

2005-12-05 15:52

Baghdad - A French engineer working in Iraq was kidnapped in a wealthy Baghdad neighbourhood on Monday, bringing to six the number of Westerners abducted over the past week in a resurgence of hostage-taking.

The French foreign ministry named the man as Bernard Planche and said he was working in Iraq for an organisation called AACCESS, "in the social and economic sector", without elaborating.

His abduction comes amid a surge of appeals by international figures for the hostages to be released as the war-torn nation experiences a fresh spike in violence in the run-up to a general election on December 15.

According to Iraqi police, four armed militants, including a woman, broke into Planche's house in the Mansour neighbourhood about 09:20 (06:20 GMT) and dragged him out.

When Planche refused to enter the car he was pistol whipped.

A nearby policeman witnessed the event and opened fire. The gunmen returned fire and fled with their hostage.

The policeman said blood was visible on the doorstep. Release

Just a day earlier, one of the most prominent US Muslim bodies, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, became the latest group to demand the release of the four Western Christian peace activists kidnapped last week.

The two Canadians, one Briton and an American, are linked to the US and Canada-based Christian peacemaker teams opposed to the continued presence of US-led foreign troops in Iraq.

Concern was also rising for a 43-year-old German woman, Susanne Osthoff, who was snatched in Mosul, in northern Iraq, three days after the expiry of a kidnappers' reported demand for Berlin to stop training local police or she would be killed.

Newly sworn-in German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, facing her first major crisis, has appealed alongside other leading national figures for her release.

Monday's kidnapping came after a particularly violent day in Iraq, including an Iraqi army sweep through the town of Al-Adhaim that killed 20 insurgents and took 75 prisoners, the defence minister said on Sunday.

- AFP