Baghdad - A majority of the more than 100 kidnapped Iraqi government workers had been released or rescued by early Wednesday morning, according to pan-Arab news channel al-Iraqiya, citing an Interior Ministry spokesman.
Several male employees of the Iraqi ministry of higher education and research were kidnapped from a state research institute in central Baghdad earlier Tuesday.
Most of the employees had been "freed by interior ministry troops in different sections of Baghdad," the spokesman said.
Hundreds of US and Iraqi army and police forces swept through Baghdad in armoured vehicles on Tuesday in the search for the hostages, who were nabbed shortly after beginning work in Karrada district.
Female staff members were locked in a room and their mobile phones taken.