BAGHDAD, Oct 22 (AFP) - Kidnapped British aid worker Margaret Hassan pleaded Friday for London to save her life by scrapping a plan to redeploy Britain's troops in Iraq, as seven people died in US air and artillery strikes on rebel-held Fallujah.
"Please help me, please help me, these might be my last hours," a sobbing Hassan said on a tape broadcast by Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera.
"I will die like Mr (Kenneth) Bigley," the British hostage executed in Iraq earlier this month, she said.
"Ask Mr Blair to pull the (British) forces out of Iraq and not to bring them to Baghdad," she said, referring to Prime Minister Tony Blair who has agreed to Washington's request to redeploy troops from the south to US-controlled areas.
Britain said Thursday an 850-strong battle group would be posted outside Baghdad as part of the redeployment that will free up US troops for an expected assault on insurgents in the violence-plagued western city of Fallujah.
On the ground, US aircraft and artillery pounded suspected weapons warehouses in the insurgent bastion of Fallujah late Thursday, leaving seven people dead and three others wounded, hospital sources said.
US marines clashed with insurgents on the outskirts of Fallujah on Friday using heavy artillery, said a military spokesman.
Determined to regain control of the no-go zone ahead of January polls, more than 1,000 joint forces have encircled the city for the past week.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi last week ordered Fallujah residents to surrender Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi or face invasion by US and Iraqi forces.
In Baghdad, court martial proceedings began for a US prison guard accused of physical and sexual abuse of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, with the trial of a second US soldier also expected to get underway Friday.
Captured aid worker Hassan, a dual British and Irish national who married an Iraqi and has lived in Iraq for the past 30 years, was kidnapped on her way to work Tuesday.
The international relief agency CARE, of which Hassan is local director, announced it was suspending operations in Iraq after her abduction.
"This is why people like me and Mr Bigley are kidnapped and could die," Hassan said in her emotional appeal, in reference to the British military presence in Iraq, according to an Al-Jazeera voiceover in Arabic.
Bigley had been abducted in Baghdad in September by Zarqawi's Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) insurgent group along with two US colleagues who were also beheaded.
No group has claimed responsibility for Hassan's abduction, and there was no identification of her captors in the footage.
In Baghdad, Specialist Charles Graner, who posed in a notorious photograph with naked Iraqi detainees stacked in a pyramid last autumn, sat clean shaven in court with his attorneys.
The preliminary hearing saw the judge, Colonel James Pohl, reject two requests from the defence and schedule the next court date for December 3 and the actual trial for January 7.
Pohl turned down a request from defense attorneys for an expert witness, Psychologist Craig Haney, who participated in a landmark 1971 study at Stanford University where students pretended to be prison guards and within days started committing abuses against supposed detainees.
Instead, Pohl said the government would provide a psychologist to work with the 36-year-old Graner within seven days.
Pohl also struck down a request to grant immunity to witnesses, who might otherwise refuse to testify for fear of self-incrimination about the events last autumn at the prison on the edge of Baghdad.
The hearing followed Thursday's sentencing of the most senior officer charged so far in the case, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, to eight years in prison.
Graner's attorney painted a portrait of a low-ranking soldier simply following orders from top brass.
As Hassan's videotaped appeal was aired, Macedonia confirmed that at least two of its nationals held hostage in Iraq had been executed.
The Macedonian foreign ministry said the dead men had been identified from television footage as Zoran Nasovski and Dalibor Lazarevski, two of three Macedonian civilians missing in Iraq since August.
The fate of the third missing Macedonian, identified as Dragan Markovic, is unknown.
Three Danish soldiers were wounded when two roadside bombs exploded next to their vehicles in separate incidents in the south of the country, Danish military officials said.
Medical sources said another roadside bomb had killed four Iraqis overnight on a road in the Latifiyah area south of Baghdad.
The towns of Iskandariyah, Latifiyah and Mahmudiyah, traversed by two of Iraq's main north-south highways, is the scene of frequent roadside bombings against convoys, kidnappings and killings.
In France, intelligence agents said they had identified the first French national known to have been killed fighting with the Iraqi insurgency.
The 19-year-old, named only as Redouane H, is believed to have travelled to Iraq via Syria at the start of the year and been killed in a US bombardment on Fallujah in July.
In Turkey, the relieved mother of a hostage kidnapped in Iraq two weeks ago told how her son had managed to escape, apparently with the help of one of his captors.
A Turkish diplomat confirmed that 21-year-old welder Abdurrahman Yildirim was free and would be flown back home on Saturday at the latest.

10/22/2004 15:17 GMT - AFP