BAGHDAD (AFP) - Two Americans and a Briton were kidnapped at gunpoint from their smart Baghdad home, as the two main powers behind last year`s controversial invasion became the latest victims in a five-month hostage crisis.
The new abductions -- compounded by the kidnapping of a Syrian driver and suspicions in Stockholm that three Swedish citizens are hostages -- came as UN chief Kofi Annan denounced the 2003 US-led war as "illegal" for the first time.
Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene `Jack` Armstrong were abducted by armed men along with a Briton, the US embassy confirmed.
Interior ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan Abdul Rahman said the three hostages worked for a Gulf-based private equipment firm.
Armed men drove up in a minibus around dawn and burst into the trio`s home in the upmarket Mansur neighbourhood of the capital.
The abduction bore the hallmarks of the way two Italian women aid workers and two Iraqi colleagues were snatched at gunpoint from inside their house in a quiet residential area of Baghdad earlier this month.
It was likely to further deplete an already dwindling expatriate community whose know-how is seen as essential to revive the war-shattered economy and build a new Iraq.
The Al-Qaeda-linked Army of Ansar al-Sunna said on its website that it had abducted and killed three truck drivers in southern Iraq.
"Mujahedeen ... from the Army of Ansar al-Sunna ... attacked a convoy of trucks ferrying supplies to the crusader forces on September 13, 2004 ... and abducted three drivers," the statement said, adding that the group had "implemented the ruling of God" against the three.
In northern Iraq, a Syrian trucker was snatched from his three-vehicle Syrian-registered convoy transporting foodstuffs, in the latest attack on foreign drivers plying the dangerous roads of Iraq, police said.
Three Swedish citizens of Iraqi origin may have been kidnapped here in three separate incidents over the past two weeks, the Swedish foreign ministry said.
"We don`t want to go into any details that could identify them and endanger them," said spokeswoman Nina Ersman, remaining tight-lipped on the details.
But Jordanian truck driver Turki al-Breizat spent his first night in freedom on Thursday after his employers promised to leave Iraq to safe him from a threatened death sentence, Amman told the official Petra news agency.
More than 100 foreigners are thought to have been abducted in Iraq since April and more than 20 murdered, in a new insurgent tactic alongside their longstanding diet of mortar and rocket-propelled grenade attacks and roadside bombings.
A massive car bomb attack against the capital`s main police station killed 49 people Tuesday and another bomb killed one Iraqi and wounded 14 Thursday.
The surge of violence coincided with the publication by the New York Times of extracts from a US intelligence report painting a bleak picture of Iraq`s future.
Without providing any specific details of the 50-page report prepared by the National Intelligence Council, one official who read it said it contained "a significant amount of pessimism".
In another blow to the US administration, Annan minced no words in an interview with the BBC, saying that from the UN point of view the US-led invasion was "illegal".
Annan also said it was unlikely Iraq would be able to hold "credible elections" as planned in January 2005 "if the security conditions continue as they are now," although interim President Ghawi al-Yawar insisted such talk was "premature".
Top US allies Britain, Australia, Poland, Bulgaria and Japan, which have deployed troops in Iraq, insisted the conflict was backed by international law.
Meanwhile, an oil pipeline feeding the Al-Dura refinery on the outskirts of Baghdad was ablaze late Thursday after a suspected act of sabotage northeast of the Iraqi capital, said an AFP correspondent.
The pipeline links the Kurdish town of Qanaqin, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Baghdad, to Al-Dura refinery.
Sabotage of oil infrastructure is common in Iraq, where a fire on a strategic northern pipeline, which had stalled exports through Turkey, was brought under control early Wednesday.