BERLIN, Aug 20: German police raided the Iraqi embassy building in Berlin on Tuesday night, freeing two hostages, both of whom were slightly injured during the operation, and arresting five of their abductors.

The building was occupied for nearly five hours by suspected members of a little-known Iraqi opposition group, which burst into the Iraqi embassy on in the afternoon and took six people hostage.

Police said that 10 people were in the building, in the Zehlendorf residential area in Berlin’s southwest, including the hostage takers and the Iraqi charge d’affaires Shamir Mohammed, who only arrived in Berlin last month.

Police confirmed that the Iraqi charge d’affaires Shamir Mohammed was one of the two people freed.

Responsibility for the incident was claimed by a group calling itself the Democratic Iraqi Opposition of Germany, which had said in a statement that the occupation would be a “peaceful and temporary action”.

In Washington, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States had nothing to do with the incident.

“The thought that the United States would be engaged in something like that is far afield. You know that, I know that, everyone here knows that,” Rumsfeld told reporters.—AFP