Iraqi Gunmen Snatch 2 Americans

Gunmen abducted two Americans and a Briton in a brazen attack Thursday on a residence in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood housing many embassies and foreign companies.

The three, all employees of Gulf Services Company, a Middle East-based construction firm, were seized from a two-story house surrounded by a wall in the al-Mansour neighborhood, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry official.

The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong were taken. In London, the Foreign Office confirmed that the third person taken hostage is British.

U.S. troops fanned out across the neighborhood to investigate the latest in a wave of kidnappings in Iraq. Hundreds of foreigners have been abducted and many of them executed by insurgents seeking to drive out U.S.-allied troops and deter foreign companies from working in Iraq's reconstruction.

Hours later, Iraqi police found the corpse of a man with blond hair and Western features in the Tigris river. The body was handcuffed from behind and had no identificaton. No word on whether it is related to the kidnappings.

Thursday abductions bring to eight the number of Westerners currently held hostage in Iraq.

At dawn, about 10 assailants pulled up on the tree-lined street in a minivan and snatched the three without firing a shot, said Abdul-Rahman. A car was also missing from their from the house, he added.

A neighbor who gave his name as Majid, 23, said he left his house around 6 a.m. during a power outage to switch on a generator.

"I noticed unusual movement in the garage. I heard voices that sounded like someone was trying to drag somebody else," he said. "I was frightened and left the area, but when I came back to the foreigners' house I saw that the outer gate was open and the foreigners' car had gone."

Another witness, 19-year-old Ziad Tareq, said he was walking down the street when he saw a man dressed in black, his face covered with a red scarf, dragging one of the hostages by the collar and pushing him into a car parked outside the house.

Several foreign embassies, contracting and security companies and many prominent Iraqi politicians are based in the al-Mansour neighborhood, which is normally teeming with security guards. It was not immediately clear whether the three were guards themselves or involved in reconstruction projects.

Iraq's 17-month insurgency and campaign of abductions and executions has created a siege-like mentality among the country's dwindling international community.