US journalist kidnapped in Baghdad and security forces hunt captors, Iraqi officials say

BAGHDAD (AP) — An American journalist was kidnapped Tuesday in Baghdad and Iraqi security forces are pursuing her captors, Iraqi officials said.

The Iraqi interior ministry said in a statement that a foreign journalist had been kidnapped, without giving more details about the journalist.

Two Iraqi security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case, said the kidnapped journalist was a woman with U.S. citizenship. They said that two cars were involved in the kidnapping, one of which crashed and was apprehended, while a second car fled the scene with the journalist, heading toward the south of Baghdad.

The interior ministry said that security forces had launched an operation to track down the kidnappers, “acting on precise intelligence and through intensive field operations” after intercepting a vehicle belonging to the kidnappers that overturned as they tried to flee.

One suspect was arrested and one of the vehicles used in the kidnapping was seized, but others remain on the loose, the statement said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad declined to comment.

It was not immediately clear if the kidnapping was related to the ongoing regional war, but Iran-backed militias in Iraq have launched regular attacks on U.S. facilities in the country since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Since the start of the war, the U.S. embassy has warned of kidnapping risks and urged citizens in the country to leave.

Iraqi militias had also kidnapped foreigners before the war.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Princeton graduate student with Israeli and Russian citizenship, disappeared in Baghdad in 2023. After she was freed and handed over to U.S. authorities in September 2025, she said that she had been held by the Iran-allied Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah.

The group never officially claimed responsibility for kidnapping her.

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Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Stella Martany in Irbil, Iraq, contributed.