Journalist, 28, Kidnapped In Iraq

Jill Carroll had just been laid off from a newspaper job and decided it was time to fulfill her dream of going to the Middle East to cover a war. Her proud sister has been keeping track of her travels in a blog.

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

Carroll, a 28-year-old freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped Saturday in Baghdad, when gunmen ambushed her car and killed her translator. She had been on her way to meet a Sunni Arab official in one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods.

In the February/March issue of AJR, Carroll wrote that she moved to Jordan in late 2002, six months before the war started, "to learn as much about the region as possible before the fighting began."

"There was bound to be plenty of parachute journalism once the war started, and I didn't want to be a part of that," she wrote.

Carroll was described by her editor as an aggressive reporter but not a reckless one.

"I've never had any indication that she's reckless," said Marshall Ingwerson, managing editor for Boston-based Monitor.

Carroll has had work from Iraq published in the Monitor, AJR, U.S. News & World Report, an Italian news wire and other publications. She has been interviewed often on National Public Radio. Her most recent story was published in Friday's issue of the Monitor, headlined "Violence threatens Iraqi coalition."

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

Unlike most Western reporters, Carroll is able to speak Arabic, "so she can operate pretty well in Iraq," Ingwerson said.

Despite her language skills, Carroll used an Iraqi translator. The translator was killed during the kidnapping, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.

Maj. Falah Mohamadawi said the translator told police just before he died that the abduction took place when he and Carroll were heading to meet Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accordance Front, in the Adel section of the city. The neighborhood is dominated by Sunni Arabs and is considered one of the toughest in Baghdad.

CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports that the kidnapping occurred as Carroll and her translator, Alan Ghazi, were leaving the office of the politician she sought to interview Saturday. As three armed men kidnapped Carroll, they shot Ghazi twice in the head.

CBS News has previously interviewed Ghazi, who owned a music store in Baghdad, and had a great affinity for American music. Since, Ghazi decided to give up the shop to pursue a dangerous career translating.

"You are a target as a citizen, you are a target, you will die at any moment," Ghazi said. "There is no security, enough security for ourselves, our families."
Carroll, in the AJR piece, noted that "kidnappings and beheadings increased, and Western reporters became virtual prisoners in their hotel rooms. When they did go out, they would travel with two cars: one up front with the reporter, and a 'chase car' following in case the first vehicle was attacked."

It was not immediately known if there was a "chase car" on Saturday.

In a statement, the Christian Science Monitor said it is "joining Jill's colleagues - Iraqi and foreign - in the Baghdad press in calling for her immediate and safe 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," Christian Science Monitor Editor Richard Bergenheim said in a statement.

Carroll's sister, Kathryn, operated a Web log that documented Jill's work in Iraq. In an entry last Thursday, the sister 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!"

A message left at a phone number listing for Kathryn Carroll, who lives in the Washington area, was not immediately returned. A woman who answered the phone at the Michigan home of Carroll's parents declined to comment.

Carroll received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1999. She returned to the United States in August after vacation in Bali, where her sister's blog said she had gone surfing, then went back to Baghdad, according to her sister's blog, which was pulled from the Web after the kidnapping.

Carroll had been laid off from her job as a reporting assistant for The Wall Street Journal before heading overseas.

In April, she found and reported about a 27-member Iraqi family whose home was destroyed by a car bomb. The youngest, a 3-year-old, was left paralyzed from the waist down. Monitor readers were touched and sent donations. Carroll returned months later for a visit.