LONDON (AFP) - Margaret Hassan, a British-Irish aid worker kidnapped in Iraq last month, was feared to have been killed by her captors after a video was issued apparently showing her murder.
If her death is confirmed, Hassan will be the first foreign female hostage to have been murdered in Iraq, amid a recent wave of hostage-taking.
Doha-based Al-Jazeera television said it had received a video showing "an armed man shooting at a blind-folded woman, who appears to be Margaret Hassan".
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said it was believed the woman killed in the video was Hassan, the 59-year-old head of CARE International`s Iraq operations seized in Baghdad on October 19.
"Our experts have been examining a video which appeared to show that Margaret Hassan has been murdered, to establish whether it is genuine," he said in a brief statement.
"As a result of our analysis we have today had to inform Margaret Hassan`s family that, sadly, we now believe that she has probably been murdered, although we cannot conclude this with complete certainty."
Hassan`s Iraqi husband, Tahseen Hassan, said he was aware of the video and begged the kidnappers to let him know where he could find her body.
"Margaret lived with me in Iraq for 30 years. She dedicated her life to serving the Iraqi people. Please, now, please return her to me," he said in an emotional statement broadcast by Britain`s Sky News television.
Hassan was one of the highest-profile victims in a scourge of kidnappings that has plagued Iraq in recent months, but was markedly different to the foreign journalists and engineers more commonly targeted.
She had been an aid worker in the country for more than 25 years, and was a vehement and vocal opponent of last year`s US-led war to topple Saddam Hussein and the crippling sanctions that preceded it for more than a decade.
A fluent Arabic speaker, in January 2003 Hassan had travelled to New York to warn members of the United Nations Security Council of the "humanitarian catastrophe" that she feared could follow a war.
It was not known who had kidnapped her, although her captors released a series of videos showing the evidently distressed aid worker pleading for her life.
The hostage-takers also threatened to hand her over to a group led by Islamic militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi unless British troops left Iraq.
However days later, a statement attributed to al-Zarqawi posted on an Islamist website called for Hassan`s release.
A statement by Hassan`s brothers and sisters, following reports of the video of her murder, said their "hearts are broken".
"We have kept hoping for as long as we could, but we now have to accept that Margaret has probably gone and at last her suffering has ended," Michael, Dierdre, Geraldine and Kathryn Fitzsimons said.
CARE International, which halted its work in Iraq following Hassan`s kidnapping, said it was "shocked and appalled" at the news.
"It is with profound sadness that we have learnt of the existence of a video in which it appears that our colleague, Margaret Hassan, has been killed," the organisation said in a statement.
"We are shocked and appalled that this has been the apparent outcome of her abduction," it said, calling her "an extraordinary woman who dedicated her life to the poor and disadvantaged in Iraq".
11/16/2004 - 19:04 GMT - AFP