By DPA
Baghdad : An Iraqi correspondent working for the US Associated Press (AP) news agency was kidnapped Tuesday in Baquba in Diyala province, independent news agency Voices of Iraq reported citing an official Iraqi police source.
The kidnappers intercepted the car of AP photographer Talal Ahmed Abdullah in central Baquba in the morning, after he left his home, and led him to an unknown place.
Baquba, capital of Diyala province, lies some 60 km north of Baghdad and has been the scene of acts of violence.
Ahmed is the second journalist missing in Iraq in as many days, a Baghdad-based media watchdog body said Tuesday.
Hassan Shahid al-Azzawi had visited a local market before heading to work, but mysteriously disappeared, the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO) said in a statement.
His colleagues and relatives have been searching for him.
Al-Azzawi was detained and tried in April 2007 on charges of defaming the former chairman of the Kut municipal council in an article published about a year earlier, according to JFO.
He spent several months in prison after being found guilty.
The JFO noted that 55 Iraqi and foreign journalists and media workers were kidnapped during the past four years, 39 of whom were killed and 16 were still missing.