Kuwaiti Times

BAGHDAD/KUWAIT: About 100 gunmen kidnapped at least 26 Qatari hunters in southern Iraq, officials said yesterday, the second high-profile abduction of foreigners in the country in three months. Turkey, which like Qatar is at odds with various Iraqi groups over regional issues, had 18 of its citizens abducted in Iraq in early September. They were eventually released unharmed. Reports late yesterday said nine of the hunters, some of them injured, were released and had arrived in Abdaly in Kuwait.

Dozens of gunmen “kidnapped 27 Qatari hunters… when they were in a camp near the Bassiyah area,” Faleh Al-Zayadi, the governor of Muthanna province where they were seized, told AFP. “All of those kidnapped are Qatari and a number of members of the ruling family in Qatar are among them,” Zayadi said, adding that the kidnappers used more than 50 vehicles mounted with machine guns. Two Iraqi officers providing security for the party were also taken but later released, he said. Other officials put the number of people kidnapped at 26.

The New York Times reports that “senior Qatari emirs” were among the hunters.

Iraqi police officials said that the kidnappers also took four of the safari’s vehicles and that two kidnapping victims were from Qatar’s governing family. The precise identities of the hostages were not disclosed.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that the kidnapping victims were seized in a desert area near the Saudi border by “unknown militants riding a number of vehicles.”