"The occupation forces are trying to incite us," Yassiri said. "We received orders that the negotiations should continue, but the occupation forces are trying to make these negotiations fail and start another battle."
The kidnapping of the two Italians and two Iraqis was one of the boldest assaults on foreign civilians in the capital. Witnesses said as many as 20 men armed with AK-47 assault rifles and pistols stormed into the aid group's house, located near a busy commercial district, and hustled out their captives at gunpoint.
A militant aims a grenade launcher in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, where two U.S. soldiers were killed Tuesday.
(Namir Noor-eldeen -- Reuters)
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AP Video Report: U.S. forces battled insurgents loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City on Tuesday.
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Audio Report: The Post's Thomas E. Ricks reports on the current conditions in Iraq.
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AP Video Report: An explosion targeted the Baghdad governor's convoy as he was traveling through the capital Tuesday, killing two people but leaving him uninjured.
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Officials with the organization Bridge to Baghdad, which has operated in Iraq since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, identified the women as Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29. The women were involved in a project to boost school attendance in Sadr City and the southern port city of Basra, said Jean-Dominique Bunel, the director of a group that coordinates the work of nongovernmental organizations in Iraq.
Bunel said his group had been in contact with religious authorities for assistance in getting the hostages released, although it was not clear which of the many shadowy kidnapping outfits operating in Iraq carried out the abduction. "We will all work for their release," he said.
More than 100 foreigners and Iraqis have been kidnapped this year, but most of the abductions have taken place outside Baghdad. Two other Italians taken hostage have been killed by their captors: journalist Enzo Baldoni, who was captured last month as he traveled to Najaf, and security guard Fabrizio Quattrocchi, who was seized in April in western Iraq.
Italy has about 2,700 troops in Iraq, the third-largest contingent of soldiers in the country after those of the United States and Britain.
The other U.S. soldier killed Tuesday was hit with small-arms fire in western Baghdad. The soldier, with the 89th Military Police Brigade, was guarding a convoy of fuel tankers that had been attacked by insurgents a few hours earlier when he was shot by a sniper atop a nearby school, witnesses said.
Three of the four soldiers killed in or near Baghdad on Monday were attacked with roadside bombs, the military said. The cause of death of the fourth soldier was not released.
Correspondent Daniel Williams in Rome and special correspondents Luma Mousawi, Khalid Saffar and Bassam Sebti in Baghdad contributed to this report.
