BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – The deadline set by kidnappers of American journalist Jill Carroll for U.S. authorities to meet their demands passed Sunday with no word on her fate and with no sign that American or Iraqi authorities are close to finding her.

An Iraqi Interior Ministry official said an extensive search was under way for the 28-year-old freelancer for the Christian Science Monitor, who was seized by gunmen in Baghdad on Jan. 7. Her Iraqi translator was killed.

“Our forces raided some suspected places, but she was not there,” Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said. “We are watching the situation closely.”

Carroll was last seen in a videotape broadcast Feb. 9 by the private Kuwaiti television station Al-Rai. The station owner, Jassem Boudai, said then that the kidnappers had set Feb. 26 as the deadline for U.S. and Iraqi authorities to meet their demands or they would kill her.

The kidnappers, a formerly unknown group calling themselves the Revenge Brigades, have publicly demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq, but Boudai indicated the group provided more specific conditions that he refused to reveal.

The deadline could not have come at a worse time, with Iraqi security forces facing a major challenge because of the sectarian crisis that erupted after bombers destroyed the golden dome of the Shiite Askariya shrine, triggering a wave of reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques in Baghdad and other cities.

The violence has pushed this country to the brink of civil war and threatened to sabotage American plans to establish a government of national unity capable of calming the Sunni-led insurgency so U.S. troops can begin to go home.

On the day of the deadline, at least 29 people, including three American soldiers, were killed in violence across the country. Mortar fire rumbled through the heart of Baghdad.

A ban on driving in Baghdad and its suburbs helped prevent major attacks during daylight, but after nightfall explosions thundered through the city as mortar shells slammed into a Shiite quarter in southwestern Baghdad, killing 16 people and wounding 53, police said.

Mortar fire also hit a Shiite area on the capital’s east side, killing three people and injuring six, police reported.

Nevertheless, officials announced they would let vehicles back on the streets at 6 a.m. Monday – in part because shops were running out of food and other basics.

Gasoline stations were closed, and people were unable to go to work Sunday, a work day in this Muslim country.

Although mosque attacks have declined sharply, sectarian violence went unabated.

A bomb exploded at a Shiite mosque in the southern city of Basra, injuring at least two people, police said.

More than 60 Shiite families fled their homes in predominantly Sunni areas west and north of Baghdad after receiving threats, said Shiite legislator Jalaladin al-Saghir and Iraqi army Brig. Gen. Jalil Khallaf.

North of the capital, gunmen stepped from a car and fired on teenagers playing soccer in a Shiite-Sunni mixed neighborhood of Baqouba, killing two of the youths and wounding five, police said.

In other violence, two American soldiers died when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad, the U.S. military said. A third U.S. soldier was killed by small arms fire in central Baghdad late Sunday, the military said.

A roadside bomb also exploded near a police patrol in Madain south of Baghdad, killing one officer and injuring two, police said.

To the west, gunmen killed an ex-general in Saddam Hussein’s army as he drove his car in Ramadi, a relative said. Former Brig. Gen. Musaab Manfi al-Rawi was rumored to be under consideration to be military commander in the town, an insurgent hotbed, said his cousin, Ahmed al-Rawi.

Gunmen in a speeding car also seriously wounded an Iraqi journalist, Nabila Ibrahim, in Kut, southeast of Baghdad.

The sectarian crisis threatened U.S. plans for a government drawing in the country’s major ethnic and religious parties, considered essential to win the trust of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority that forms the backbone of the insurgency.

With a broad-based government in place, the Bush administration hopes to begin withdrawing some of its 138,000 soldiers this year.

A former British ambassador to Iraq predicted Sunday that increasing sectarian bloodshed would require the U.S.-led foreign military coalition stay for some time to help keep peace among rival ethnic and religious groups.

“One could almost call it a low-level civil war already,” Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who Britain’s envoy in Baghdad until 2004, told British television channel ITV1.

During a meeting at Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s residence, representatives of the main political parties agreed late Saturday to renew efforts to form an inclusive government.

But Sunni politician Nasir al-Ani said Sunday that his side was looking for some tangible steps before ending their boycott of government talks.

Sunni and Shiite religious leaders have also called for unity and an end to attacks on each other’s mosques.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose own militia was blamed for many of the attacks on Sunnis, repeated the appeal Sunday when he addressed followers in the southern Shiite stronghold of Basra upon his return from neighboring Iran.

He accused Americans and their coalition partners of stirring up sectarian unrest and demanded their withdrawal.

Also Sunday, the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera satellite channel broadcast a tape it received from the family of Canadian hostage James Loney appealing for his release and that of three colleagues from the Christian Peacemaker Teams abducted with him in Baghdad on Nov. 26.

“James is a loving, compassionate, selfless man,” said a woman relative who appeared on the tape. She did not say what her relation to Loney was, but may have been his sister-in-law since she said her husband and his relatives were scared for their brother.

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Associated Press writers Robert H. Reid, Bassem Mroue, Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Jalal Mudhar in Baghdad, Ali al-Fatlawi in Hillah and Hana Abdellah in Baqouba contributed to this report.

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