Gunmen released Iraqi deputy electricity minister Raad al-Harith Tuesday evening, hours after he was kidnapped on a busy street in Baghdad.

Officials from the Electricity Ministry told the press that al- Harith was released in the evening, but provided no further details.

On Tuesday morning, unknown gunmen kidnapped the deputy minister and 19 of his guards in Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.

The source said unidentified gunmen, wearing Iraqi army uniforms, ambushed the convoy of Raad al-Haris on the Qanat Street in eastern Baghdad.

A number of government senior officials and parliament members have been seized away in a new wave of kidnapping in Iraq.

On Saturday, unknown gunmen kidnapped a female Sunni Arab

lawmaker Taiseer Najah al-Mashhadani and seven of her bodyguards, while she was traveling in a Shiite neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad. Her whereabouts is still unknown.

On Sunday, a senior official from Iraq's health ministry was also kidnapped in Baghdad.

Source: Xinhua