Irish journalist feared kidnapped in Baghdad

Irishman Rory Carroll, the Baghdad correspondent of the Guardianis missing believed kidnapped in the Iraqi capital, the newspaper has confirmed.

Rory Carroll has been in Iraq for nine months

Mr Carroll, who is from Blackrock in Dublin,  is understood to have been abducted by a group of armed men as he left a house in Baghdad's Sadr City area where he had been watching the televised trial of Saddam Hussein with an Iraqi family, whose son had been abducted and killed by Hussein's forces some years ago.

Sadr City is a Shia-dominated area of Baghdad and a stronghold of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs told ireland.comthat Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern had been in direct contact with Mr Carroll's family.

The spokesman said the Department was keeping the minister abreast of developments and said its embassies and consular offices in the region were working to get as much information as possible about this afternoon's abduction.

Speaking on RTE this evening, Mr Joe Carroll, the journalist's father and a former Irish Timescorrespondent, said that the family had been contacted by the Guardianand told about the kidnapping shortly after 1pm.

"We understand the driver may have been roughed up [during the abduction] but he wasn't taken. Beyond that we don't know very much."

Mr Carroll said that prior to being sent to Iraq, Rory had been on a course organised by the Guardianwhich detailed what to do in the event of being the victim of a kidnapping and expressed his confidence that he would "react sensibly" to today's events.

"He went out of his way I think to reassure us that he wasn't in danger and that he was in the hotel a lot. And then he had two drivers and he had two interpreters, so he himself used to play it down," Mr Carroll said.

"But we kind of knew, given the set-up there, that there must be danger for all journalists working there," his father said.

He has been on assignment with the Guardian in Iraq for just over nine months.

A Guardianjournalist since 1997, he first served as a home news journalist before being posted to Rome in 1999 where he was the paper's Southern European correspondent. In 2002 he was made South African correspondent.

Before joining the Guardian, Mr Carroll - a Trinity College graduate - was a journalist with the Irish Newsin Belfast where he  won Northern Ireland's young journalist of the year award in 1997.

In a statement released today the newspaper said it was urgently seeking information about Mr Carroll's whereabouts and condition.

The British Foreign also said it was aware of the reports  and said it was trying to find out more.

"Our information is that the journalist is an Irish national. We are in contact with the Irish authorities,We would ask those involved to release him unharmed."

The Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said the British Government would assist in any way it could, if asked, to help free Mr Carroll.

"We will do whatever the Irish Government asks us to do, because of course he is an Irish citizen," Mr Hain said.

"He may have been working for a British paper but he's an Irish citizen. We will give what help we can but only whatever Dublin wants us to do."   "He is an Irish citizen and although we are on the ground and may be able to help, it is very important that people out in Iraq, and maybe including those people responsible for this terrible abduction, understand that he is an Irish citizen, albeit working for a British newspaper," he said.

"Therefore the Irish Government is the one that will be in the lead on this."

Speaking on The Last Word on Today FM tonight, Le Figarojournalist and former kidnap victim Georges Malbrunot said the location of Mr Carroll's kidnapping offered some hope. "We could assume that he was kidnapped by a Shia group which is good news because journalists who have been kidnapped have, in general, been released after intervention of Moqtada al Sadr who is against kidnapping," Mr Malbrunot said.