Qatari Safari Members, Including Royalty, Are Abducted In Iraq

                                      
BAGHDAD:  Militants in the southern Iraq desert ambushed and abducted at least 26 hunters from a Qatari safari early Wednesday, officials of both countries reported. The kidnapping victims were said to include some members of senior Qatari royalty.

Dozens of kidnappers, dressed in military uniforms and riding in at least 50 sport utility vehicles with machine-gun mounts, overwhelmed Iraqi sentries guarding the Qataris' tent encampment in the Samawa desert near the border with Saudi Arabia, said Falih Hasan, the governor of Muthanna province.

The governor said the kidnappers, whose identities, affiliations and motives were unclear, "attacked the tents where the hunters stayed and insulted and beat the security forces accompanying them" as they seized at least 26 members of the expedition and spirited them away before dawn.

He also said that "senior Qatari emirs" were among the hunters.

Iraq's Interior Ministry said in a statement that the kidnapping victims were seized in a desert area near the Saudi border by "unknown militants riding a number of vehicles."

Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that it was working with Iraq's government "at the highest security and political levels" to determine who had abducted the hunters and to secure their release.

Despite many years of war, mayhem and instability that continue to convulse Iraq, its southern desert is regarded as a paradise for hunters among the wealthy classes of affluent Arab states in the Persian Gulf like Qatar. Safaris have been organized annually for hunting migratory birds and other game, despite the security risks.

The site of the abduction is far from the areas of northern and western Iraq controlled by the Islamic State, the extremist group that has been targeted in an aerial bombing campaign by Western and Arab governments.

The Qatari Foreign Ministry said the safari had secured permission from the Iraqi government. But some Iraqis who also hunt in the region questioned the judgment of the safari organizers.

"I have many friends who come every year to Iraq to hunt and enjoy their time, but some have stopped coming because of the security situation," said Saood Abdulaziz, an Iraqi bird hunter.

Regardless of who carried out the mass abduction, it seemed bound to create political reverberations for Qatar, a tiny but wealthy Sunni Arab emirate in the Persian Gulf and a close ally of Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The Qataris have solidly aligned themselves against Syria's government in that country's civil war, and they are participants in the Saudi-led military coalition that has been battling Houthi militants in the Yemen conflict. Qatar also is the host country to the largest American military air base in the Middle East.

The abduction was carried out a day after Saudi Arabia announced that it had organized a 34-nation coalition of countries with large Muslim populations, including Qatar, to combat Islamic terrorism.