Several Americans have vanished in Iraq, authorities said Sunday, with at least one report raising concern that they may have been kidnapped by militias.
“We are working in full cooperation with Iraqi authorities to locate the missing Americans,” said U.S. Embassy spokesman Scott Bolz.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said that “due to privacy considerations” he had nothing further to add about the group.
“The safety and security of Americans abroad is our highest priority,” Kirby said.
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An official in Baghdad told CNN three contractors disappeared on Friday.
“A company filed a report Sunday about three of its staff going missing two days ago,” the official said. “They are American contractors. We are looking into this report.”
The State Department would not say how many Americans are reported missing or who they are. The White House did not comment on the abduction.
Arab news channel al-Arabiya, citing its own sources, said three missing people may have been abducted by militias.
Iraqi media reports said the Americans vanished in southern Baghdad on their way to Baghdad International Airport.
A Western security official said Sunday that he had been told that three Americans disappeared 24 to 48 hours ago.
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There were no immediate claims of responsibility.
ISIS, Shiite militias and criminal gangs demanding ransoms have been carrying out kidnappings throughout the region.
The latest incident comes after a week that saw a deterioration of security in and around the Iraqi capital, after months of relative calm.
The Islamic State group claimed a number of attacks in Baghdad and neighboring Diyala province last week that killed more than 50 people, including a high-profile attack on a mall in the Iraqi capital.
The string of ISIS attacks on civilian targets within areas under Iraqi government control follows battlefield losses, most recently in western Iraq.
Last month, Iraqi troops pushed ISIS fighters out of the center of Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar province in Iraq’s Sunni heartland.
In acts of apparent reprisal, armed gangs that residents identified as Shiite militias attacked Sunni-owned businesses and mosques in Diyala province just north of Baghdad. After ISIS was forced out of the province, security there was left almost entirely in the hands of Shiite militias.
Responding to a call to arms from Shiite clerics in Iraq after the Islamic State group swept across the country’s northern and western provinces in the summer of 2014, Shiite militias in Iraq now wield more power than the country’s regular security forces and military.
With News Wire Services
