Kidnapped Irish Journalist Freed

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A journalist for a British newspaper who was kidnapped by gunmen was released unharmed Thursday after a day in captivity, the publication said.

Rory Carroll (search), 33, an Irish citizen who is The Guardian's Baghdad correspondent, was on assignment when he was abducted by gunmen on Wednesday.

"He just said, 'I am safe and well and I have all my limbs on,'" Carroll's father, Joe, said in a story posted on the Guardian Web site.

The elder Carroll told the Guardian his son had called him at home in Dublin to say "he was perfectly OK and in an Iraqi government compound having a beer."

Carroll was brought to the British Embassy in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone (search) district, where he went to sleep, the embassy said.

A resident of Baghdad's Sadr City (search) neighborhood who was involved in winning the journalist's release told The Associated Press that he was sitting next to Carroll after his release. The resident spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want his involvement in the release to be known.

The resident said Carroll was kidnapped by criminals and that a group of Sadr City residents raided the area in which he was held and freed him.

His account of the release could not be confirmed.

Carroll's father said his son had been in a cell "and representatives of the Iraqi government came for me, they had a government car waiting. I have been in Baghdad all the time."

Carroll, who had been in Iraq for about nine months, has previously reported for the Guardian from South Africa and Rome.

It was not clear where Carroll was abducted. Sadr City is an overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood of eastern Baghdad where a Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army (search), holds sway. The militia is known to aggressively keep other gunmen out of the neighborhood.

In October 2004, American photographer Paul Taggert (search) was abducted in Sadr City and held for three days before being released unharmed. Representatives of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (search), who heads the Mahdi Army, said they mediated to win his release.