Gunmen in Baghdad abduct reporter with ties to Boston

A 28-year-old freelance reporter on assignment in Iraq for a Boston-based newspaper was abducted by gunmen in Baghdad over the weekend and remains missing, with US and Iraqi authorities yesterday scouring the war-torn city in search of her.

Jill Carroll, who was working for Christian Science Monitor, moved to Iraq three years ago, drumming up freelance work through sheer enterprise, all the while acutely aware that the region was growing more precarious for Westerners.

Carroll, a 1999 graduate of the University of Massachusetts, was on her way to interview a prominent Sunni Arab politician in a Baghdad slum when five or six armed men ambushed her party, the Monitor said. The men fatally shot her translator and abducted Carroll. Her driver escaped without injury.

By yesterday, the kidnappers had not contacted authorities or issued any demands.

''The ministry is working on this issue and investigations and searches are underway. We are gathering information through our sources and we cannot say more," said General Mahdi al-Gharawi, commander of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's public order forces.

Carroll wrote mostly for the Monitor, but also did work for US News & World Report and an Italian news agency. She has also freelanced for the Globe.

Several news outlets, including the Globe, withheld stories about Carroll's disappearance over the weekend to help facilitate quiet negotiations for her release. But with her kidnappers still incommunicado yesterday, the Monitor issued a public statement urging her release.

''Jill's ability to help others understand the issues facing all groups in Iraq has been invaluable. We are urgently seeking information about Ms. Carroll and are pursuing every avenue to secure her release," Richard Bergenheim, the editor of the Monitor, said in the release.

Insurgents have kidnapped at least 36 journalists in Iraq since April 2004 and killed six of them, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

''We call on whoever is holding Carroll to release her at once," said Ann Cooper, the group's executive director.

The Monitor quoted Carroll's driver as saying he saw a group appear suddenly, ''as if they had come from the sky."

''One guy attracted my attention. He jumped in front of me screaming, 'Stop! Stop! Stop!' with his left hand up and a pistol in his right hand," said the driver, who was not identified.

Editors at the Monitor said Carroll was an intrepid and savvy correspondent who delivered impassioned but balanced dispatches from Iraq.

''She's a very professional, straight-up, fact-oriented reporter," said managing editor Marshall Ingwerson.

Unlike most reporters in Iraq who have the backing of major news organizations, Carroll ventured into the conflict on her own.

''You'd rather jump off a cliff than cover one more zoning board meeting," she wrote in the February-March 2005 issue of the American Journalism Review, explaining her decision to go to Iraq.

Carroll studied journalism at UMass-Amherst's journalism school.

''She knew right from the beginning she wanted to be a foreign correspondent, a war correspondent," said Karen List, chairwoman of the program. ''It's really quite remarkable because most students who graduate with a journalism degree go to work at a small paper. So, she went on her own and she started to freelance and now she's doing very well and writing for a number of different outlets. She was very driven."

Carroll's parents live in Ann Arbor, Mich., and could not be reached for comment. She moved to Jordan six months before the Iraq war began to familiarize herself with the Muslim world.

''All I ever wanted to be was a foreign correspondent," she wrote in the American Journalism Review. ''It seemed the right time to try to make it happen."

Several times last year, Carroll, who is fluent in Arabic, wrote articles describing the tension and fear enveloping Baghdad. She walked around Iraq in a full headscarf, aware that her foreigner status could get her killed.

''After a terrifying fall when kidnapping and beheading became common, many journalists and freelancers had left," Carroll wrote on her Monitor weblog in January 2005. ''There are only a few of the old stalwart freelancers around now. I can't walk in the streets anymore or drop into a shop or a market to talk to average Iraqis. The whole atmosphere has changed, charged with hostility and fear."

Carroll's sister, Kathryn, operates a weblog called ''Lady of Arabia," that documented her sister's exploits. Kathryn Carroll, in an entry Thursday, wrote: ''Jill finally sent some photos and these are great! Be sure to notice the blast walls to Jill's left by the xmas tree. At least we know there's some protection there!"

Material from the Associated Press was used for this report.