GETTY/JFO Afrah al-Qaisi was abducted by a group of armed men from her home in Baghdad

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Afrah al-Qaisi is an outspoken critic of government institutions in satirical columns she writes for several local newspapers and media outlets. Qaisi used to work for the pan-Arab, Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat. Iraq's Interior Ministry said in a statement it had formed a team to look into her abduction.

They separated the children from their mother after forcefully entering the house and took money, jewellery, laptops and her car as they left Ziyad al-Ajili, Iraqi Journalistic Freedoms Observatory

The gunmen took Qaisi from the predominantly Sunni southern Saydiya district of the capital where she lived with her family, according to Ziyad al-Ajili, head of the Iraqi Journalistic Freedoms Observatory. Mr Ajili said: "They separated the children from their mother after forcefully entering the house and took money, jewellery, laptops and her car as they left." Her husband was away at the time and the assailants broke into the house after Qaisi refused to open the door.

GETTY The gunmen are said to have broken into the woman's house

Iraq is ranked second after Somalia in the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) 2016 Index of Impunity, which calculates the number of unsolved murders over a 10-year period as a percentage of each country's population. Over the past decade, 71 journalists have been killed with impunity in Iraq, according to the CPJ.

GETTY 71 journalists have been killed with impunity in Iraq, over the past decade