Five Britons kidnapped in Iraq

Five UK citizens have been kidnapped from the finance ministry by a group of up to 40 men, some dressed in police uniforms.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "Officials from the British embassy in Baghdad are in urgent contact with the Iraqi authorities to establish the facts and to try to secure a swift resolution."

The Government's Cobra emergency committee was convened after it emerged that gunmen in a large convoy of sports utility vehicles sealed off nearby streets and stormed into the computer science building.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is in Libya at the start of a five-day tour of Africa, said: "We will do everything we possibly can to help."

A ministry employee who witnessed the incident said computer experts had been giving a lecture on organising electronic contracts when gunmen walked into the room led by a man wearing a police major's uniform.

Four of those abducted are believed to be private security guards who were employees of Canadian company GardaWorld and thought to be working for the fifth British hostage, an expert advising the ministry.

The witness said the gunmen were shouting: "Where are the foreigners, where are the foreigners?". She added that another lecturer had managed to escape being taken away as he was sitting apart from his colleagues.

Reports claiming that three German computer programmers had been taken were later dismissed by the country's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Meanwhile, two US military personnel were killed when their helicopter came down under enemy fire north of Baghdad and six more died when a column of vehicles heading to the crash site was ambushed.

Later, two more American troops were killed, bringing to 114 the number of troops killed in May, and making it the deadliest month for US troops since November 2004.

Elsewhere, at least 38 people were killed and over 90 were wounded in separate bomb blasts in the capital.

At least 15 people were killed and 36 wounded when a truck bomb exploded in a busy market in southwestern Baghdad.

And an earlier bomb planted in a parked bus killed at least 23 people and wounded 68 near a major intersection in Tayaran Square, a busy commercial area usually filled with markets in central Baghdad.

Many day labourers, mostly poor Shias, also often wait in the area for work.

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