LILONGWE, Jan. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- The telecommunications engineer kidnapped in Iraq on Wednesday morning was not a Malawian as reported earlier but a Kenyan, the Malawian government announced on Wednesday evening.

    "It was a case of mistaken identity. The kidnapped engineer is not a Malawian but a Kenyan," Malawi's Information Minister and government spokesperson Patricia Kaliati told Xinhua.

    She said the only Malawian who was working for Iraqna, a Baghdad-based telecommunication company, was safe and that she had talked to him on the phone and was told that the kidnapped was a Kenyan.

    "The only Malawian working for Iraqna has confirmed to me that no Malawian was kidnapped in the ambush," Kaliati said.

    The media reported earlier on Wednesday that a Malawian engineer and his colleague from Madagascar were abducted by gunmen who attacked their convoy of three vehicles as it was heading for repair work on a transmitting station in western Baghdad.

    Kaliati said the issue of mistaken identity came in since most Iraqis refer to every black person working in the country as a Malawian because Malawians have worked in the country for a very long time.

    The Iraqi Interior Ministry told international media that the gunmen killed at least 10 Iraqi guards during the attack on the convoy before abducting the two engineers who were working for the country's telecoms company, Iraqna, a subsidiary of the Egyptian-owned Orascom Telecom.

    Although the Malawian government does not send professionals to work in Iraq, a number of Malawian telecommunication and construction engineers have privately secured highly paying jobs in the war-torn country. Enditem