Search continues for reporter

BAGHDAD -- Iraqi and US officials said yesterday they were working to free an American journalist kidnapped on a Baghdad street a week ago but had not yet made contact with her captors.

Jill Carroll, a 28-year-old freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, has not been heard from since she was grabbed Jan. 7 in one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods. Gunmen ambushed her car and killed her translator shortly after she left the offices of a Sunni Arab politician.

The US Embassy said it was working with local authorities ''and doing everything possible to bring about her safe release."

An Iraqi Interior Ministry official said police were taking the matter ''very seriously."

''We are doing our utmost to find her or reach her. The search continues," said General Hussein Kamal, deputy interior minister in charge of domestic intelligence.

The Christian Science Monitor, based in Boston, said yesterday that it continued ''to pursue every possible avenue" to win Carroll's release.

''This has been a difficult week for Jill's family and for us," Richard Bergenheim, the Monitor's editor, said in a statement.

''Jill's deep love for Iraq and the Iraqi people have come out in the published statements by a number of her Iraqi friends and fellow reporters. She is committed to helping the world understand the great good to be found in Iraq and its people, despite the struggles it is going through now."

The US military raided a prominent Sunni mosque a day after Carroll was kidnapped, provoking a demonstration by hundreds of worshipers.

A US military official said the raid was a necessary immediate response to the kidnapping based on a tip provided by an Iraqi citizen.