Iraq Watch: March 30, 2006

American Hostage Carroll Released

BAGHDAD, Iraq - After being held hostage for nearly three months, The Christian Science Monitor's Jill Carroll was released by her captors early Thursday afternoon.

Carroll's 82-day ordeal ended shortly after noon when she was dropped off near the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party's (IIP) offices in western Baghdad.

The 28-year-old freelance journalist was abducted January 7 while on assignment in the capital's western Adil neighborhood. Allan Enwiyah, Carroll's translator, was killed during the course of the kidnapping.

The previously unknown Revenge Brigades claimed responsibility for the abduction and threatened to kill her by February 26 unless all female detainees being held at U.S. and Iraqi detention facilities were released.

During an impromptu interview conducted shortly after her release by the Iraqi Islamic Party Carroll, wearing a traditional Arab head dress, was quoted as saying, "I was treated very well, it's important people know that."

Late Thursday, according to the SITE Institute, the Revenge Brigades issued an 8:50 minute video of Carroll prior to her release. The video, conducted in English, could not be independently verified.

Meanwhile, in ongoing violence, eight oil refinery workers were killed by militants Thursday after being ambushed in Beiji, an industrial city located about 110 miles north of Baghdad.

Also, the U.S. military announced the deaths of two service members Thursday. A U.S. airman, assigned to the 447th Air Expeditionary Group, was killed and another injured by a roadside bomb near Baghdad while conducting safing operations. Separately, the U.S. military announced that a U.S. soldier from the 9th Naval Construction Regiment died from wounds sustained Tuesday "due to enemy action" in the volatile Anbar province.