Deathtrap Iraq

An Iraqi freelance journalist working as a stringer for news agency Agence France-Presse has been abducted in Baghdad after visiting a relative in a government-run jail. Bilal Abdelrahman al-Obeidi disappeared on August 14 after he visited a detention centre near the Interior Ministry in central Baghdad to see his cousin. Mr Obeidi's family and AFP have been in contact with his captors using his...

(08-31) 04:00 PDT Washington -- U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public-relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq. The contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone as part of a program to provide...

U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq. The contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone as part of a program to provide "public relations products" that...

Reuters has urged the US military to investigate the killing of one of its journalists by American troops in Baghdad a year ago. An independent inquiry commissioned by Reuters concluded that the soldiers' shooting of television soundman Waleed Khaled on August 28 last year had appeared "unlawful". KILLED IN COLD BLOOD: The uncle (left) and father of Reuters journalist, Waleed Khaled, cry over his...

Two people were killed and 20 others wounded when a car bomb was detonated in the parking area of the state-owned Iraqi daily Al-Sabah in Baghdad. The explosion took place at about 9am on Sunday and destroyed nearly 20 cars owned by the newspaper's staff, agencies reported. REMAINS IN RUBLE: A man walks amid the rubble inside the destroyed office of the state-run newspaper after a bomb attack in...

BAGHDAD -- Mohammed Shakir has been selling newspapers from his stall on the right bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad for 20 years. He used to offer a selection from all of Iraq's political movements and parties - but no more. In his majority Sunni neighborhood that has proved simply too dangerous. Two months ago a group of masked men showed up at his stall and ordered Shakir to stop selling...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Two days after her abduction in Baghdad, American journalist Jill Carroll desperately pleaded with her captors to believe she was not hiding an electronic chip somewhere in her body to communicate with U.S. Marines. In a personal account of her 82 days held captive in Iraq, Carroll said a leader of the militant group accused her of secretly tipping off U.S. forces to her...

CERTAIN she would be murdered by the men who kidnapped her on a Baghdad street and fatally shot her translator, American journalist Jill Carroll begged her captors at one point to use a gun to end her life rather than a knife. "Promise me you will use this gun to kill me by your own hand. I don't want that knife, I don't want the knife, use the gun," Carroll remembered crying hysterically to the...

HABANIYAH, Iraq -- U.S. Marines who cracked the Jill Carroll kidnapping case say the American journalist was held for a time in a home within sight of a sprawling U.S. military base in western Iraq. The Marines said the big break occurred May 19 when they searched a suspect's home near the Taqqadum logistics base seven weeks after Carroll's release. Jake Cusack, 24, a first lieutenant from Grand...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 9 — American marines have captured four Iraqi men suspected of playing a role in the kidnapping of an American journalist, Jill Carroll, in Baghdad in January, American military officials said Wednesday. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV said the four men, whom he declined to identify, were arrested in the Sunni Arab-dominated region west of Baghdad. On Wednesday, an American...