2 Italian women kidnapped by militants in Iraq

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BAGHDAD -- Two Italian women working for an aid agency in Iraq were kidnapped yesterday, the agency said.

Gunmen in olive green uniforms broke into the group's Baghdad offices and took the women along with two Iraqis, one of them a woman, neighbors said.

The attack was only the second known kidnapping of foreign women since the wave of abductions began earlier this year. The first involved a Japanese aid worker captured in Fallujah in April along with two other Japanese, who were all released a week later.

The Washington Times reported two months ago that U.S. forces believed Iraqi militants were seeking to kidnap an American woman in order to shock the American public.

The kidnappings came as renewed fighting with the Mahdi's Army militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr helped push the number of Americans killed in Iraq to 1,001, according to an Associated Press tally. The official Pentagon count remained at 994.

Two of the seven Americans killed yesterday died in Sadr City, where battles involving warplanes and tanks killed an estimated 35 Iraqis and wounded more than 200. The outbreak threatened to shred a cease-fire negotiated with Sheik al-Sadr 12 days ago in the city of Najaf.

The two Italian women kidnapped yesterday were identified as Simona Torretta, the head of the Baghdad office of the relief group "A Bridge To Baghdad," and Simona Pari, both 29. The two Iraqis were identified as Raad Ali Aziz and Mahnaz Bassam.

A spokesman at the Rome headquarters of the agency, Lello Rienzi, told reporters that about 20 armed men stormed their offices, saying they were from an unidentified "Islamic group."

Witnesses in Baghdad said about 15 men drove up to the one-story villa used by the group and broke in. The men claimed to work for the office of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, the witnesses said.

A government spokesman denied Mr. Allawi's office was involved, and said that workers had been kidnapped.