Gunmen have abducted two Italians and two Iraqis working for a non-governmental (NGO) relief organisation in Baghdad. The armed attackers stormed a building where the Bridge to Baghdad NGO offices were located in central Baghdad on Tuesday and kidnapped two Italian women and two Iraqi support staff, witnesses said. A spokesman for the aid group named the two Italians as Simona Pari and Simona Torretta. "Two Iraqis were also seized by the gunmen. The woman is called Mahnaz Bassam. She is an Iraqi and worked for Intersos for more than a year," Dr Nino Sergi, secretary general of Italian aid group Intersos, told Aljazeera.net "She was trying to develop NGO relations in Baghdad. These workers were trying to help the Iraqi people, nothing else." **Five minutes*** Iraqi journalist Abdullah Khudair told Aljazeera: "The operation only took five minutes." "A three-car force broke into the organisation's building and tied the hands of one of the staff and threw the others on the floor". "The militants asked the names of the staff until they reached Simona Pari and the office head, Simona Torretta, who were captured by the militants," Khudair added. **Targeted abduction*** "It appeared it was totally professional. It appeared they knew exactly who they wanted to abduct," said one witness, who declined to be named. Witnesses told reporters about 20 men with AK-47 assault rifles and pistols fitted with silencers stopped their vehicles in broad daylight in a busy commercial area of Baghdad and raided the building. Khudair said: "The kidnappers spoke on behalf of the Iraqi government, in fact on behalf of Dr Iyad Alawi". However, Dr Sergi disputed that Iraqi government forces may in any way be tied to the kidnapping. "There is no way I believe the kidnappers are Iraqi government forces. Absolutely no way," he told Aljazeera.net. Guards told Khudair that the kidnappers wore military clothes and carried "strange" rifles. The armed men allegedly dragged the Iraqi woman away by her hair. "She was screaming," a witness said. Jean-Domique Bunel, an official from a committee that groups together aid organisations in Iraq, said he saw two well-dressed men with guns enter the building and take away the hostages. "The guards were unarmed and they did nothing," he said. **Aid workers*** The Italian women were involved in an aid initiative aimed at boosting school attendance in Basra and Baghdad, including in the capital's Sadr City slums, home to thousands of Shias. An official at the Italian embassy said they had no immediate information on the kidnappings. However, Aljazeera.net has learned Italian government officials were holding emergency meetings in Rome. Bridge to Baghdad is a volunteer association established after the end of the 1991 Gulf War, to promote humanitarian aid to Iraq and fight an economic embargo imposed on the country when Saddam Hussein was president. **Security concerns*** In August, an Iraqi group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq kidnapped and later killed Italian reporter Enzo Baldoni, who worked for the Milan-based weekly "Diario". 100 foreigners and Iraqis have been taken captive in Iraq since April in a campaign to drive out foreign companies and troops from the country. Most of captures have taken place outside of Baghdad and this latest abduction is bound to raise security concerns. **PHOTO CAPTION*** An Iraqi policeman secures the area as a US military tanker is engulfed in fire after it came under attack on the outskirts of Baghdad.(AFP)