Gunmen kidnapped 42 university students near the city of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, on Sunday, a provincial police source said.

"Unidentified gunmen intercepted a bus carrying students from Mosul University near the Jerin village, some 20 km south of Mosul and kidnapped 42 of them," Brigadier Khalid Abdul Sattar told Xinhua.

The students were coming from villages in the Qaiyyarah town, some 60 km south of Mosul City, heading to the Mosul University when the gunmen attacked their bus, Sattar said.

He added that local police believed the attackers were affiliated to the al-Qaida network, which has regrouped in the province after being driven from their strongholds in Baghdad and other provinces of Anbar and Salahudin.

Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, has been the hotbed of insurgency since the U.S.-led invasion five years ago.

(Xinhua News Agency April 6, 2008)