BAGHDAD, Aug 9: US forces in Iraq have arrested four men they suspect of involvement in the kidnapping of American reporter Jill Carroll and raided three houses where they think she was held, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the US-led forces said the four captives included a member of the Mujahideen Shura, an umbrella body of Sunni groups in Iraq.

Jill Carroll, a 28-year-old freelance reporter working with the US daily Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped in Baghdad in January by a gang who shot her driver dead while she was on way to meet a Sunni politician.

She appeared on televised videos pleading for her life and was later freed following the intervention of senior Sunni politicians.

The suspects were picked up in a recent series of raids in western Iraq, starting with a house in Habbaniyah, 13 kilometres west of Fallujah in Anbar province, which had been spotted by a young US military officer.

“Troops on the ground — young sailors and marines — paid attention to details that may have been considered minor at the time,” said Major General William Caldwell, the spokesman, showing reporters a video of the interior of the house.

Details of the decor, including a bookshelf in an upstairs bedroom of the two-storey, stone-built detached house, matched descriptions of a place where Jill Carroll had been held during her three-month ordeal, he said.

A suspect was arrested in the home and his interrogation gave soldiers information that led to another site west of Baghdad.

Three more raids netted the three other suspects and led to US forces rescuing two more hostages being held in a home in Kazimiyah area, protected by booby-traps, which the rescuers managed to disarm, Gen Caldwell said.

Iraqi and US officials were drawing up criminal cases against the suspects.

Gen Caldwell did not say when the suspects were picked up, but said the details were being released because ms Carroll was about to publish her own story. —AFP