Iraqi security forces have been deployed across the Baghdad neighbourhood from where three Americans were reportedly kidnapped over the weekend, closing streets and conducting house-to-house searches.

The US embassy in Iraq confirmed that “several” of its citizens had gone missing, after local media reported that three Americans had been kidnapped in the Iraqi capital.

“We are working in full cooperation with Iraqi authorities to locate the missing Americans,” said the embassy spokesman Scott Bolz, who did not identify them or say why they were in Iraq.

John Kirby, a state department spokesman, said that for privacy reasons he had nothing further to add about the missing Americans. “The safety and security of Americans abroad is our highest priority,” he said.

An Iraqi government intelligence official told the Associated Press that the Americans were kidnapped from their interpreter’s home in the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora. A police officer in the area, however, said the individuals were taken from their car on Saturday when it was stoppedon a highway in south-west Dora while they were driving to Baghdad International airport. Neither of the different accounts could immediately be verified.

A western security official said on Sunday he had been told that three Americans went missing 24 to 48 hours earlier.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility. Kidnappings in Iraq have been carried out by Islamic State and Shia militias as well as by criminal gangs demanding ransom payments or disgruntled employees seeking to resolve workplace disputes.

The incident comes amid a deterioration of security in and around the Iraqi capital after months of relative calm.

Isis claimed a number of attacks in Baghdad and neighbouring Diyala province last week that killed more than 50 people, including a high-profile attack on a mall in the Iraqi capital. The group’s attacks on civilian targets within areas of Iraqi government control follow losses by the group on the battlefield, most recently in western Iraq. Last month, Iraqi troops pushed Isis fighters out of the centre of Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar province in Iraq’s Sunni heartland.