BAGHDAD, Iraq – The Christian Science Monitor has launched a campaign on Iraqi television stations, hoping to win the release of reporter Jill Carroll who was kidnapped in Iraq two months ago.

The newspaper’s videotaped message appeared on the private Sharqiya television Wednesday afternoon, a day after it was first broadcast by state-run Iraqiya-TV, according to the Monitor.

Carroll, a free-lance writer for the Boston-based paper, was kidnapped on Jan. 7, in Baghdad’s western Adl neighborhood while going to interview Sunni Arab politician Adnan al-Dulaimi. Her translator was killed in the attack about 300 yards from al-Dulaimi’s office.

Carroll reported on Maine’s congressional delegation and covered Washington, D.C., for the Bangor Daily News through States News Service between August 1999 and June 2000.

The Monitor’s Arabic-language plea for Carroll’s release begins with a line of print that reads: “Please help with the release of journalist Jill Carroll.”

Pictures of the reporter then appear on the screen, including one that shows her in an Islamic veil.

A narrator says: “Kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll loves Iraq, and now she needs your help. Time has come for Jill Carroll to return home safely.”

– From The Associated Press