Turkey says 18 Turkish construction workers have been kidnapped in northeastern Baghdad.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on September 2, "We are in close contact with the Iraqi [Interior] Ministry and hope the incident will end positively."
The kidnapped engineers and laborers are employees of a Turkish company building a sports complex in the Shi’ite district of Sadr City.
They had been sleeping at the site when masked gunmen in military uniforms arrived in vehicles at dawn and took them away.
There were no reports of violence.
No group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.
Last year, 46 Turkish citizens were seized by Islamic State militants in the northern city of Mosul. They were released unharmed after more than three months in captivity.
