Efforts continue to find missing journalist

Efforts are continuing to find an Irish journalist feared kidnapped in Iraq.

Rory Carroll, 33, Iraq correspondent for ‘The Guardian’, is believed to have been abducted by armed men while conducting an interview in Baghdad.

The Guardian said that Mr Carroll, who has been in Iraq since January, had been at a house in the Iraqi capital where he was conducting an interview with a victim of former dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Two drivers and a translator had accompanied him, but when he left the house armed gunmen confronted him, the newspaper reported. He was then bundled into a car, along with one of the drivers, who was released shortly afterwards.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, said the paper was “deeply concerned” about Mr Carroll’s disappearance. He described him as a “very good, straight journalist” who wanted to report “fairly and truthfully” about the situation in Iraq.

Mr Rusbridger said: “We urge those holding him to release him swiftly – for the sake of his family and for the sake of anyone who believes the world needs to be kept fully informed about events in Iraq today.”

Mr Carroll, who was born in Dublin, began his career in Belfast working for the ‘Irish News’, before joining the Guardian in 1999. He was the papers’ South Africa correspondent, before he began covering events in Iraq. The Guardian said he had volunteered to go to Baghdad and said that his coverage had been critical of the coalition’s campaign in the country.

The Guardian said that the Irish government is in contact with embassies in the Middle East to try and find Mr Carroll.

At his afternoon press briefing on Wednesday, Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the government was “obviously concerned” about the apparent kidnapping and said that the Foreign Office was working with both The Guardian and Mr Carroll’s family to try to establish the facts of the situation.

(KMcA/SP)