Gunmen release six Iraq Red Crescent workers

BAGHDAD: Kidnappers have released six out of 30 people who were snatched at gunpoint on Sunday from a major branch of the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad, the aid group's top official said.   

The six were elderly men who worked as guards or drivers at the Red Crescent office in the upmarket central Baghdad district of Karrada, said Mazen Abdallah, secretary general of the Iraqi Red Crescent.   

The hostage-takers, dressed in police uniforms, asked captives their names and job titles before dropping the six men off on the outskirts of Baghdad following the brazen daylight kidnapping, Abdallah said.   

Twenty-one Iraqi Red Crescent employees and three visitors to the Karrada office -- one of the aid group's biggest in Baghdad -- are still being held, Abdallah said.