Turkey on Wednesday confirmed that 18 Turkish construction workers have been kidnapped by unknown individuals in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
“Eighteen Turkish citizens working for a construction company in Baghdad have been kidnapped,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told reporters.
“We are in close contact with the Iraqi (interior) ministry and hope the incident will end positively.”
The Iraqi authorities had earlier said gunmen had abducted at least 17 Turkish employees of a company building a football stadium in the Shia-dominated Sadr City area of north Baghdad.
Nurol Insaat, a leading Turkish construction company, confirmed in a statement to AFP that its workers had been abducted in Baghdad and said that it had not yet received any ransom demand.
Turkish foreign ministry spokesperson Tanju Bilgic also said that the kidnapped Turks were working on the construction of a stadium in Baghdad and included 14 workers, 3 engineers and an accountant.
