BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Two Macedonian men working for a German cleaning company have been kidnapped near the southern Iraqi city of Basra and are being held for ransom, a Macedonian foreign ministry official said on Saturday.
The British military in Iraq had said earlier that the two men were abducted on Thursday while driving in a vehicle with a German woman who also worked for the Ecolog cleaning company.
The Macedonian government official, who asked not to be named, said the government had known about the incident since Thursday and that a ransom demand had been made.
"There was a ransom demand. There are negotiations under way between the company and the group," he said at a briefing in the capital Skopje on Saturday.
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The official said this was the fourth time Ecolog employees had been abducted. A ransom was paid on the three other occasions, he said.
The two men were ethnic Albanians, according to the official.
Macedonia has some 32 soldiers stationed in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition. Between 1,000 and 1,500 Macedonian citizens are working in Iraq, lured by salaries far in excess of what they could realistically expect to earn in Macedonia.
Three Macedonian citizens working as construction workers in Iraq were kidnapped south of Baghdad in August 2004. They were confirmed killed in October that year.
British military spokesman Major Peter Cripps said the Iraqi police were investigating.
Basra, Iraq’s second city, has been relatively free of the violence plaguing the central part of the country but it has witnessed kidnappings.
More than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis have been abducted in the anarchy that followed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Most foreign hostages have been released, but 54 are known to have been killed; more than 50 are still believed to be held.
