BOSTON — Athletes put themselves on the line to win their games, Jill Carroll wrote in an essay last spring. The freelance foreign correspondent risks everything, she wrote, "for love of the story."
Carroll, 28, was working as a contributor for the Christian Science Monitor when she was abducted at gunpoint last weekend in Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi authorities continued to search for her Tuesday.
Carroll was seized by gunmen Saturday while reporting on efforts by Iraqi politicians to form a new government. She was leaving the headquarters of a Sunni political party by car when she was confronted in one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods. Her Iraqi interpreter, Allan Enwiyah, 32, was killed in the attack, but her driver escaped without injury.
At the request of the Monitor, The Times and other media outlets delayed publishing information about Carroll's abduction to allow time for negotiations that might help win her release.
Monitor Editor Richard Bergenheim said Tuesday, "We continue to do everything we can to secure Jill's release."
Ellen Tuttle, communications manager for the Boston-based newspaper, said the paper would provide no further details about Carroll or her abduction.
"It's such a sensitive situation," Tuttle said. "We have been counseled to give as few details as possible."
Tuttle praised the professionalism and dedication that motivated Carroll to go to Jordan before the Iraq war began to learn about Muslim culture. Tuttle said it was clear in Carroll's work that she was pursuing a career that was something of a calling.
"I think she had that passion, and that gave her the energy to continue," even in perilous conditions, Tuttle said.
In the essay published last year in the American Journalism Review, Carroll said: "All I ever wanted to be was a foreign correspondent."
Carroll graduated from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1999 with a degree in journalism.
Since arriving in Baghdad in 2003, she had freelanced for the Italian news agency ANSA, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe and several other U.S. dailies. In addition, she had done some stringing -- or freelance work -- for U.S. News & World Report. She had worked in Iraq for the Monitor for about a year.
Carroll, fluent in Arabic, also wrote for the Jordan Times while living in Amman, the Jordanian capital.
Times correspondent Borzou Daragahi recalled meeting Carroll in Baghdad in 2003.
