Kirkuk's provincial police chief attributed the kidnapping in the oil-rich city on the release from jail nearly two months ago of five women linked to Al-Qaeda, which he admitted had been a "mistake."

Late on Saturday, four gunmen in military uniform stormed into the home of Hamid Taher al-Barazanji, a policeman whose brother, Colonel Mohammed Taher al-Barazanji, heads the Kirkuk police's internal affairs division.

The gang handcuffed Barazanji and covered his mouth with masking tape before kidnapping his 25-year-old wife Haifa Abdul Saheb, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.

The officer added that Kirkuk police believed an Islamist group, Ansar al-Sunna, was behind the kidnapping.

"Criminals are trying to arouse sectarian feelings in the Kirkuk community," provincial police chief Major General Jamal Taher Bakr told AFP as he confirmed the kidnapping.

He tied the abduction to the October 28 release of five jailed women linked to Al-Qaeda in exchange for two kidnapped Kurdish sisters, as part of a bid to curb violence in the city.

Barazanji was involved in negotiations which led to the exchange.

"The police cannot exchange detainees for people who have been kidnapped, because it encourages terrorism," Bakr said. "The exchange of the five women who were released in October was a mistake."

Police had earlier said that two hours after Saheb's kidnap, another group of armed men kidnapped a Sunni tribal sheikh and his daughter in a village 35 kilometres (20 miles) south of Kirkuk.

But Kirkuk deputy provincial police chief Brigadier General Torhan Yusuf told AFP later on Sunday that the pair had been briefly detained by several plain-clothes policemen who worked in Kirkuk's internal affairs division and released shortly thereafter.

Kirkuk is an oil-rich province that is home to a tense and fragile mix of Kurds, Sunni Arabs, Turkmen, Shiites and Christians.

Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region wants to incorporate the bordering province into its territory, a claim which the Baghdad central government rejects.