Iraq says seeking release of kidnapped Britons

BAGHDAD, May 31 (Reuters) Iraq's government said today it was working closely with the British authorities to secure the release of five Britons kidnapped from a government building in Baghdad in a raid blamed on a Shi'ite militia.

''The Iraqi government has undertaken urgent measures to determine the facts and locate the kidnappers. It is in contact with the British authorities over any developments,'' the government said in a statement.

A special military unit has been set up to help hunt for the Britons -- a computer expert and his four bodyguards who were snatched on Tuesday from inside a Finance Ministry building by dozens of gunmen wearing police uniforms.

''The government condemns this crime and is doing all it can to ensure the immediate release of the kidnapped Britons,'' the statement said.

A senior Finance Ministry official said the building's guards were being questioned over the raid, in which no shots were fired.

Investigators will be trying to establish how the gunmen knew the Britons were in the building.

One of the guards said he had been briefly detained for questioning and then released. He said other colleagues were still being held.

The guard, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters the gunmen had been led by a man in a police major's uniform who spoke to the hostages in fluent English. He said he did not recognise the gunmen's weapons but they were not AK-47s, the standard-issue weapon for Iraq's security forces.

Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, said on Wednesday he suspected that the Mehdi Army militia of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was behind the kidnapping because the ministry was close to their stronghold of Sadr City.

Iraq's police are known to be heavily infiltrated by Shi'ite militias and have often been accused of carrying out kidnappings and killings. Dozens of people were seized from the Higher Education Ministry by gunmen in police uniform last year.

A government official said the abductions could be in retaliation for the killing of the militia's commander in the southern city of Basra by British-backed Iraqi soldiers.

Sadr has made no public comment on the abductions, but aides say the operation was beyond the capability of the Mehdi Army.

US and Iraqi forces have staged raids in Sadr City in their hunt for the Britons, using armoured vehicles to smash down walls of houses. The unusually heavy-handed tactics indicate the soldiers are racing to find them before they are moved, possibly out of the capital.

Police said two people, a man and his son, were killed in an air strike overnight on their home in Sadr City. It was not clear if it was linked to the search for the Britons. The US military said it was checking the report.

In a separate statement the military said it had staged a raid in Sadr City on Thursday and detained two suspected members of a ''secret cell terrorist network'' responsible for bringing roadside bombs into Iraq from Iran.

REUTERS PJ BD2017