Berlin: German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier described a video broadcast on Friday showing two German hostages in Iraq as "shocking" and renewed an appeal for their release.
The two engineers, who disappeared in northern Iraq on Tuesday, were shown in front of four masked kidnappers armed with assault rifles on the video shown by the Doha-based Arabic television station Al-Jazeera.
"The pictures which reach us from Iraq this morning are shocking," Steinmeier said.
"We call for them to be released as soon as possible. The German government will do everything possible to bring both of these men to safety."
The two men, named by the German media as Rene Braeunlich, 31, and Thomas Nitzschke, were kidnapped from the Baiji oil refinery compound by armed men in military uniform.
Cryotec, the German gas installation company which employed the two men, has rejected criticism that it had failed to protect its workers.
"They are biased statements made without knowledge of the circumstances," Cryotec chairman Peter Bienert told Friday's edition of the Leipziger Volkszeitung newspaper in the hostages' home city of Leipzig in eastern Germany.
Bienert said that before they had travelled to Iraq last week, his company had checked out the route the men would take to work and the situation at the refinery.
Al-Jazeera said a group calling itself "Ansar al-Tawheed wal Sunnah" produced the videotape but added that the kidnappers did not issue any demands.
Although the two men could be seen speaking, their voices were not heard.
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