An Italian woman journalist was kidnapped today near Baghdad University.

Iraqi police officials said she was seized by four gunmen in a car near the Jadriyah bridge over the Tigris river in central Baghdad.

She was named as Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist for the left-wing daily newspaper Il Manifesto, according to Mainardo Bernedeli, a diplomat at Italy’s embassy. He did not elaborate.

The alarm was raised by her translater.

"Giuliana called us a quarter of an hour ago to say she was fine, but five minutes later her interpreter rang us back to say that she had been abducted near a mosque in Baghdad," said Gabriele Polo, one of the directors of Il Manfesto.

He said it appeared that an armed gang fired on the car she was travelling in, forcing it to stop. She was then seized and driven off.

Signor Polo, whose paper opposed last year’s US-led invasion of Iraq, said that US and Iraqi forces and the Italian embassy had been told of the kidnapping.

Signora Sgrena is the second Italian journalist to be kidnapped in Iraq. Enzo Baldoni, a freelance writer and blogger, went missing on August 20 and was reported killed August 26. A video of his mutilated body was posted on the internet.

Florence Aubenas, a 43-year-old senior correspondent for the left-leaning French newspaper Liberation, and her Iraqi translator Hussein Hanun al-Saadi have not been heard from since they left her Baghdad hotel on January 5.

Two French journalists who were kidnapped south of Baghdad in August were released in December.

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