A second Canadian working in Iraq has been missing in Iraq for 11 days and is believed to have been kidnapped, Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.

CTV.ca News Staff

A second Canadian working in Iraq has been missing in Iraq for 11 days and is believed to have been kidnapped, Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.

Rifat Mohammed Rifat was reportedly last seen leaving work at a prison west of Baghdad on April 8. Ali Rifat, the man's brother, reported him missing to Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham on April 15.

He is believed to have been kidnapped, but Ottawa does not know where he is being held.

"We have reports that he is alive and being held in Iraq at this moment," a spokesperson for the department told CTV.ca. "We are urging those who are responsible to set him free."

Dan McTeague, the parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs, confirmed the disappearance and reminded Canadians that his department had urged Canadians in Iraq to leave the country on April 9.

"I hope this will somehow reinforce that the decision taken on April 9 was in fact the correct one," he said.

McTeague used the word "detained'' rather than kidnapped. He wouldn't explain what he meant, saying only that this was a "delicate situation."

He said "no stone will be left unturned" in trying to locate Rifat but acknowledged that will be difficult because Canada doesn't have a strong diplomatic presence in Iraq.

According to the Edmonton Journal, the 41-year-old Rifat was born in Iraq and immigrated to Canada 23 years ago.

He returned to Iraq last November as a salesman for an Iraqi mobile telephone company, his family says. He had recently joined a Saudi company that had a project at the Abu Ghareb prison.

Rifat is the second Canadian reported to have been kidnapped Iraq in recent weeks.

Fadi Fadel, an aide worker in Iraq, is expected back in Canada tonight. He was captured on the same say as Rifat and held 10 days before being freed by his captors, who accused him of being an Israeli spy.

Fadel was released Friday after Graham appeared on Al Jazeera television to stress the Quebec man was Canadian and not an Israeli spy, as his captors had alleged.

John Holmes, the Canadian ambassador to Jordan, worked hard to prove Fadel was indeed a Canadian aid worker by handing out his picture and copies of his passport.

Several foreign workers from about 12 different countries have been abducted in Iraq in a new tactic taken by insurgents who want coalition countries to pull their troops out of Iraq.

Meanwhile, a search is also underway for a Canadian journalist reported missing in the Ivory Coast.

Over the weekend, a spokesperson for the French embassy told Associated Press that Guy Andre Kieffer, a reporter for the bi-weekly France-based Letter of the Continent, has not been seen since sometime last Friday.