CBS journalist, Iraqi interpreter abducted

BAGHDAD —  A Western journalist and his Iraqi interpreter working for CBS News were missing Monday after being abducted outside their hotel in the southern city of Basra, Iraqi police said.

According to an Iraqi police report, the two had been missing since Sunday evening. It said eight SUVs arrived at their hotel earlier in the day and their occupants asked to see the guest list. Later, when the journalists left the hotel, two SUVs were waiting for them and took them away, the police report said.

In a statement issued Monday in New York, CBS said two journalists working for the network in Basra were missing. It did not give their names.

“All efforts are underway to find them, and until we learn more details, CBS News requests that others do not speculate on the identities of those involved,” it said, adding that the journalists’ families had been notified.

Violence has subsided in Iraq in the last year, but abductions for financial gain or political purposes are common.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in its annual report issued last week that Iraq is the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. According to CPJ, at least 126 journalists, most of them Iraqi, have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, and 51 others have been kidnapped. They have included American freelance journalist Jill Carroll, who was held for 82 days in 2006 before being released.

CBS News has already suffered two losses in the conflict: cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan, both Britons, were killed May 29, 2006, by a car bomb in Baghdad that seriously hurt correspondent Kimberly Dozier. A U.S. Army captain and his Iraqi interpreter were also killed by the blast, which occurred as the CBS crew was following them for a story about U.S. troops working on Memorial Day.

Four months before the CBS crew was hit, ABC anchor and correspondent Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were riding in an Iraqi personnel carrier north of Baghdad when it was rocked by a roadside bomb. Both men were seriously hurt. Woodruff was in a medically induced coma for 36 days, but eventually returned to work.

There is no U.S. troop presence in Basra, the country’s second-largest city, and the British forces who once patrolled there have pulled back to a base on its outskirts. Rival Shiite Muslim militias are vying for control of the oil-rich city, and police said Shiite fundamentalists have attacked unveiled women and others who do not adhere to strict Islamic moral and dress codes.

tina.susman@latimes.com

matea.gold@latimes.com

Susman reported from Baghdad and Gold from New York. A special correspondent in Basra contributed to this report.