Prep. student kidnapped in Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: A student in the preparatory stage of education was kidnapped by unidentified persons in southern Kirkuk on Monday morning in a second copycat incident in less than a week, a local police official in the city said. “An armed group in a vehicle with an unknown number plate kidnapped a 17-year-old boy in the al-Nasr neighborhood, southern Kirkuk, while on his way to his preparatory school,” Col. Shirzad Muwaferi told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The kidnapped boy is the son of a rich notable in the city. Watching him being kidnapped, a colleague of his tried to use his cell phone to report to the police but the gunmen snatched it away and escaped,” he added. Muwaferi said the reasons for the kidnapping are not known, adding a description of the vehicle was reported to all checkpoints and police stations. The al-Adala police station director had said that two students at a school near al-Khadraa neighborhood, southwestern Kirkuk, had been kidnapped on Tuesday (Oct. 20) by unidentified gunmen. Their fate is not yet known. The oil-rich Kirkuk, a city of mixed Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen population, lies 250 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. AmR (P) 1