Watchdog calls for release of female journalists on International Womens Day.

(From BBC Monitoring International Reports)

Text of press release by Paris-based organization Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) on 7 March; subheadings as published.

On the eve of International Women's Day on 8 March 2006, Reporters Without Borders calls for the release of Jill Carroll and Rim Zeid, held hostage in Iraq, and for six other women journalists who are imprisoned in Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, Maldives, Nepal and Rwanda.

The organization also pays particular tribute to the family of Atwar Bahjat, a reporter on TV channel al-Arabiya, who was murdered on 22 February in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Forty-six women have been killed worldwide while doing their job since 1992.

Jill Carroll and Rim Zeid, two women held captive by armed groups

American journalist Jill Carroll, 28, working for several international media including the Boston daily Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped …