Gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped a group of Westerners from a government building in Baghdad Tuesday and 10 US soldiers were reported killed, making May the deadliest month this year for the US military.

The gunmen seized the Westerners from a Finance Ministry building in eastern Baghdad. A ministry employee who witnessed the kidnapping said three computer experts and several of their bodyguards were taken in the daring daylight raid.

The German government said it was not immediately able to substantiate Iraqi police reports that the experts were German.

But a British Foreign Office spokesman confirmed that five Britons had been kidnapped in Baghdad.

"I can confirm that a group of five British nationals were abducted this morning at 0850 UK time, which is 1150 local time, in an incident at the Finance Ministry in central Baghdad," the spokesman said.

"Officials from the British Embassy in Baghdad are in urgent contact with the Iraqi authorities to establish the facts and to try to secure a swift resolution."

Also Tuesday, at least 38 people were killed when a bomb on a parked minibus exploded in central Baghdad and a car bomb exploded in a busy market in a southwestern Shi'ite district.

The US military also announced that two of its soldiers died when their helicopter came down under enemy fire in Diyala province north of Baghdad on Monday. A quick reaction force heading to the crash site was ambushed by roadside bombs that killed six soldiers.
 
Their deaths, which happened as Americans observed Memorial Day services for their war dead, took the May death toll to 114. It is the highest monthly toll since December 2006, when the same number died.

A total of 3,465 US soldiers have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. The worst month for US forces was November 2004, when 137 were killed.

The Iraqi Finance Ministry official who witnessed the kidnapping said the computer experts had been giving a lecture on organizing electronic contracts.

The gunmen entered the lecture room led by a man wearing a police major's uniform, the witness said.

"Where are the foreigners, where are the foreigners?", the gunmen shouted, she said.

The witness said another lecturer escaped being abducted because he was sitting apart from his colleagues.

Police said gunmen in a large convoy of sports utility vehicles, typically used by police, had driven up and sealed off streets around the ministry's computer science building.

It was the first reported kidnapping of foreigners since the Baghdad security plan began in mid-February. Kidnappings in Baghdad are a daily occurrence, usually for ransom or political motives. Men in camouflage uniforms took dozens of Iraqis from the Higher Education Ministry in November.

This was believed to be the first time that Westerners had been taken from inside a government building.

More than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped since the US invasion in 2003, although there had been a recent lull in the taking of foreigners.

(China Daily via agencies May 30, 2007)