Three American contractors are missing in Iraq, a senior security official in Baghdad says.
“A company filed a report Sunday about three of its staff going missing. … They are American contractors. We are looking into this report,” the official told CNN.
Separately, an Iraqi security official with knowledge of the case said that two of the contractors are dual Iraqi-American citizens and that the third is an American national.
Gunmen grabbed the men at an apartment in Baghdad’s southeastern Dora neighborhood late Friday afternoon, the source said.
A security operation was underway in the al-Saha part of the Dora neighborhood, an Iraqi intelligence official with Baghdad operations command told CNN on Monday.
Dora has been “sealed” by security forces trying to find the contractors, the official added.
The contractors were taken away in a vehicle convoy, said the source, who talked to CNN on condition of anonymity, as he is not authorized to speak to the media.
Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood is a religiously mixed one, its residents consisting of Shiite, Sunni, Christian and other faiths.
The U.S. State Department said it was aware of the report that American citizens are missing in Iraq.
“We are working with the full cooperation of the Iraqi authorities to locate and recover the individuals,” spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.
