Merkel strongly condemns kidnapping of German woman in Iraq

German Chancellor Angela Merkel strongly condemned on Tuesday the abduction of a German woman archaeologist and her driver in Iraq, urging the kidnappers to release them.

"The German government condemns this in the strongest terms. We send an urgent appeal to the perpetrators to release the two to safety immediately," Merkel told reporters after an emergency cabinet meeting. She pledged that Germany would make all efforts to secure the safe return of the woman and her driver.

The German Foreign Ministry, which confirmed that a woman and her driver have been missing since Friday, set up a crisis team to handle the matter.

A video of the kidnapped woman was delivered to the public television station ARD in Baghdad overnight on Tuesday. The kidnappers demanded that the German government stop cooperating with the Iraqi government otherwise the hostages would be killed. ARD added that the ultimatum gave a "very short time limit."

German rolling news channel N24 named the woman as 43-year-old Susanne Osthoff from the southern state of Bavaria and said she had been in Iraq for years, was fluent in Arabic and had converted to Islam. She is also married to a man of Jordanian origin and has an 11-year-old daughter.

Osthoff's mother told N24 that her daughter had helped organize aid deliveries to war-torn Iraq since the 1991 Gulf war and appealed to the German government to do its best to save her daughter.

Dozens of foreigners have been taken hostage in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003, including Americans, Canadians, a Briton and Iranians.

Source: Xinhua