ISLAMABAD, July 31: Foreign Office spokesman Masood Ahmed Khan said on Saturday about 400 Pakistanis are currently working in Iraq. "These Pakistanis are attached with two companies operating in Baghdad,"

Mr Khan told a private TV channel quoting Pakistan's Ambassador to Kuwait, Khizar Hayat Niazi.

About 40 Pakistanis are working with an Australian company, which is constructing the British embassy in Baghdad while 320 are associated with Al-Tamimi group of Industries.

Mr Khan said: "These Pakistanis have not expressed the desire to get out of Iraq."

Responding to a question, he said Pakistan government was making efforts to recover bodies of the two Pakistanis killed by their captors.

"We are in regular contact with the Iraqi interim government," he said, adding that the Iraqi premier had also directed the interior ministry to utilize all available resources to find the bodies.

All security agencies in Iraq had been directed by the Iraqi government to intensify efforts to recover bodies of the two slain Pakistanis, the spokesman added.

After Friday sermons in Iraq, he recalled, special appeals were made to recover the bodies of the two Pakistanis to send them to their homeland for burial.-APP