Baghdad, 24 Jan. (AKI) - The Iraqi authorities have arrested three people in Baghdad suspected of being involved in the kidnapping of American freelance journalist Jill Carroll. An interior ministry statement said the arrests were made during a raid by the security forces in the Adel neighbourhood where Carroll was seized. The journalist, working for the US daily Christian Science Monitor, was pulled from her car on 7 January and her interpreter was killed. She had been due that day to interview Adnan al-Dulaimi, the leader of the Iraqi Consensus Front movement, a Sunni political grouping.

Qatar-based TV network al-Jazeera last week aired a video ofCarroll in which her captors threatened to kill her unless all female prisoners in Iraq were released within 72 hours.

Carroll, looking strained, is shown apparently speaking to the camera, but the sound-track does not include her voice. Al-Jazeera did not say where it got the tape, but has called for Carroll's release.

A freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper, as well as other news organisations, Carroll is the 31st foreign journalist to be kidnapped in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003. More than 40 Westerners and hundreds of Iraqis are being held in the country.

Four Christian peace activists, including a Briton an American and two Canadians, were abducted on 26 November.