2 Russians, Italian Kidnapped in Syria

Local Editor

Russia announced Tuesday that two of its nationals along with an Italian steel worker had been abducted in Syria on a motorway from the port city of Tartus.
"By all appearances, they are Russians," Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on a visit to the Central Asia state of Uzbekistan.
He further mentioned that Moscow was undertaking "all the necessary steps both in Syria and other countries" to win the men's release.

Earlier, Russia's embassy in Damascus confirmed that two of the country's workers had been abducted together with a man identified by the Italian media as Mario Belluomo.

"Two Russians and an Italian were kidnapped on the road linking Tartus to Homs," the spokesman of the Russian embassy in Damascus Sergei Markov told state television.
In parallel, neither the two Russians' identity nor the circumstances of the abduction were released.

However, the Russian embassy noted that all three men worked for a privately-owned Syrian factory in Tartus.
It was not immediately clear when the abduction occurred.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by moqawama.org