Kidnapped person freed in south of Kirkuk

Kirkuk-Kidnappers KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: Policemen on Monday managed to free a kidnapped youth and to kill one of his kidnappers in south of Kirkuk, the chief of local police said. “Police force freed a kidnapped young man and killed one of his kidnappers during an operation waged in Taza district in south of Kirkuk,” Brig Sarhad Qader told IraqiNews.com. “The kidnappers kidnapped the young man in Kirkuk and took him in Taza,” he said, noting that one the two kidnappers who were arrested is a cop and the other is an employees in the Kirkuk health department,” he added. He did not add more details. Kirkuk, 250 km (156 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, sits on the ruins of a 5,000-year-old settlement. Because of the strategic geographical location of the city, Kirkuk was the battle ground for three empires, Assyria, Babylonia and Media which controlled the city at various times. Kirkuk is the centre of the northern Iraqi petroleum industry. It is a historically and ethnically mixed city populated by Assyrians, Kurds, Arabs and Iraqi Turkmen. The population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2008. SH (S)/SR 1