Three children were freed and their kidnappers were arrested hours after police received information that an armed group had kidnapped the children from the families of two policemen in central Ramadi, Iraqi police said Saturday (February 11th).

Maj. Hamid Zaban, an Anbar police spokesperson, told Al-Shorfa the kidnappers sought to force the children's fathers to resign from police or yield to their demands by meeting with them before they were killed.

Zaban said similar cases occurred in the past, but citizens' co-operation with the police led to arrests and discovery of new al-Qaeda's hideouts in al-Sajar, west of Ramadi, that contained weapons and explosives.