BAGHDAD, 17 November 2004 — The British-Irish aid executive Margaret Hassan, kidnapped by rebels in Iraq, was feared dead yesterday, as US-led forces swept into the flash point city of Mosul in a renewed offensive against insurgents.
Hassan, kidnapped last month in Baghdad was said by her family to be probably dead, while Al-Jazeera television said it had received a video showing a blind-folded woman being shot, who was apparently Hassan.
The murder of Hassan, if confirmed, would be the first time that a female hostage has been killed by her abductors. The 59-year-old executive from CARE International was captured on her way to work on Oct. 19.
“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,” said her family in a statement.
Al-Jazeera has not shown the video, which it says shows “an armed man shooting at a blind-folded woman, who appears to be Margaret Hassan.”
The British Embassy also spoke of a video of her killing that was “probably genuine” and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in London also said Hassan was probably dead.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed his “abhorrence” at the apparent killing. Following her kidnapping, Hassan was shown pleading for her life in a series of videos released by the hostage-takers, who also threatened to hand her over to a group led by Islamic militant Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi unless British troops left Iraq.
Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda-linked group of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers (Iraq) beheaded another British hostage, Kenneth Bigley, last month after he was abducted in Baghdad in September with two US contractors. They were also murdered.
