Gunmen stormed a house in Iraq's ethnically divided northern oil hub Kirkuk on Tuesday and kidnapped three Turks who were inside, police said.
The five attackers entered the house in the south of the city in which eight Turkish workers and engineers were living and snatched three of them, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said the kidnappers were armed with four pistols and a Kalashnikov rifle, and carried out the raid at around 8:30 pm (1730 GMT).
The officer identified the kidnapped men as Ali Hekmet Rajab Qolanimiz, 31, Mutlab Katak, 21, and Baktiar Hassan College, 39, all of whom are from Istanbul.
He added that none of the eight had valid Iraqi visas in their passports, and said that police were interviewing the other five Turkish men who were in the house at the time of the raid.
The Turkish embassy in Baghdad could not immediately be contacted by AFP.
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