Gunmen have kidnapped a female American journalist in Baghdad after shooting dead her driver, police said.
They said she had been on her way to a meeting with a Sunni Arab leader when she was kidnapped in the Adel district near Malik bin Anas mosque in west Baghdad.
Immediately after the incident, American and Iraqi troops sealed off the area, witnesses said.
Thousands of civilians have been kidnapped since the fall of Saddam Hussein, including more than 200 foreigners seized by gangs seeking ransom or insurgents trying to force their governments to withdraw from Iraq. Many hostages have been released, but around 50 have been killed.
There has been a spate of kidnappings of Westerners over the past few months after a lull during most of 2005.
Four Christian peace activists and a French engineer are among those still being held captive.
The wife of the British captive, 74-year-old Norman Kember, called on his abductors to free him in a televised appeal yesterday, saying he was "a man of peace".
Mr Kember, American Tom Fox and Canadians James Loney and Harmeet Sooden were kidnapped on November 26th in Baghdad, where they were working with a Christian peace organisation, by a group calling itself the Swords of Truth.