Dedicated aid worker, Hassan, killed

People around the world and specially the people of Iraq are filled with revulsion at the reported murder of Margaret Hassan.

Asia One: A close friend described her as 'one of those slender people with a spine of steel'.

She dedicated most of her working life to easing the plight of ordinary Iraqis. Yet all the good work and the numerous appeals failed to move Mrs Margaret Hassan's captors.

She has apparently been killed, Care International said early this morning.

Mrs Hassan was involved in humanitarian relief in Iraq for 30 years and for the last 12 years she worked for Care as its director.

Shortly after her abduction, patients at a Baghdad hospital took to the streets to protest against the kidnapping.

They credited her with helping to rebuild the medical facility last year, reported CNN.

The protesters carried pictures of her and banners which called for the release of 'Mama Margaret'.

The last project Care completed with her effort was a rehabilitation unit for patients with spinal injuries.

In a poignant demonstration, the patients who could, painstakingly wheeled themselves into the street, held up banners pleading for her release.

The news of her killing was reported by Arab TV network Al-Jazeera.

It said it had obtained a video showing a masked militant shooting a blindfolded woman, who was referred to as Margaret Hassan, in the head using a handgun.

The TV network decided to wait on reporting the news until it confirmed the authenticity of the tape.

After she was kidnapped, her husband Tahseen Ali Hassan pleaded with her kidnappers to let her go, even putting up posters in Baghdad.

He said: 'They should know that my wife has worked almost all her life for the Iraqi people and considers herself an Iraqi.'

Sky News reported that Mrs Hassan was a vocal opponent of international sanctions on Iraq. Before the war to topple Saddam Hussein, she warned it would bring a 'humanitarian catastrophe' on Iraq.

When war broke out, she was determined to stay to continue her work despite the danger. At the time she was taken hostage she was in charge of 60 Iraqis who run nutrition, health and water programmes throughout the country.

But her kidnapping led Care to withdraw from the country.

Mrs Hassan, who was in her 60s, held Irish-British-Iraqi citizenships.

Her family said in a written statement: 'Our 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.'

She is said to have fallen in love with Iraq more than 30 years ago, when she travelled there as a young bride with her Iraqi husband.

She converted to Islam, learned Arabic and took Iraqi citizenship.

Her film-maker friend, Felicity Arbuthnot, told the BBC recently: 'It was Iraq's children who haunted her, she called the children of the embargo 'the lost generation'.

'Half of Iraq's population is aged below 15. Childless herself, to see her cradle infants stricken with Iraq's myriad of illnesses which have reached epidemic proportions since 1991 - linked to the destruction of water facilities and the chemically toxic and radioactive depleted uranium weapons used - one felt her passion to protect all Iraq's children as her own.'

She said that while filming in an area of exceptional deprivation and poverty in Iraq, a crowd gathered. On seeing Mrs Hassan, thin, stressed faces, broke into wide smiles, children ran and hugged her round the knees chanting: 'Madam Margaret, Madam Margaret...'

Weeks before her kidnap, she told the Independent newspaper's Robert Fisk despairingly: 'There will be a second generation of lost children now.'

Mrs Hassan was kidnapped on Oct 19 by a group that did not identify itself.

The group said on Nov 2 that it would turn her over to an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group - Base of Jihad - if the British government did not pull its troops out of Iraq within 48 hours.

Base of Jihad has been blamed for numerous beheadings of foreigners in Iraq, including the slayings of Americans Nicholas Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, and Briton Kenneth Bigley. They also claimed responsibility for the killing of a Japanese hostage.

Mrs Hassan's husband has appealed to the kidnappers to return his wife's body.

He said: 'I beg those people who took Margaret to tell me what they have done with her... I need her back to rest in peace.'