Margaret Hassan, a British-Iraqi woman who spent decades on humanitarian work in Iraq, has been apparently killed by kidnappers. Al-Jazeera television said it received a video showing a hooded militant shot her in the head.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday expressed "abhorrence" at the apparent killing of Hassan, who was the director of aid organization CARE International in Iraq, his spokesman said.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said analysis of the videoshowed Hassan has "probably been murdered, although we cannot conclude this with complete certainty."

The 59-year-old Hassan, who was born in Dublin and held Iraqi, British and Irish citizenship, had been engaged in humanitarian aid work in Baghdad for 30 years.

She was seized by an unknown group on her way to work in Baghdad on Oct. 19. The captors' demand for the pullout of Britishtroops from Iraq was rejected.

Irish President Mary McAleese said: "It is a cruel irony that Margaret's captors did not show to her the same humanity and kindness which she demonstrated daily to those around her."

Hassan's husband Tahseen Ali Hassan, an Iraqi national, said "I have been told that there is a video of Margaret which appears to show her murder. The video may be genuine but I do not know."

In an interview with Sky News Television, Tahseen has made a plea for her body to be returned to him "to rest in peace."

Hassan's brothers and sisters in Britain have said in a statement that "our hearts are broken."

Hassan's Australian employer said Wednesday it was shocked and appalled at her fate.

"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," CARE Australia said in a statement.

Hassan spent 12 years as CARE's Iraq director, paid through thecharity's Australian branch. If confirmed, she would be the first foreign female hostage killed in Iraq.

Hassan was one of the nine foreign women kidnapped in Iraq overthe past eight months. Seven of them, including two Italian aid workers, have been released.

The only one known to be still held was Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a longtime resident in Iraq who was born in Poland and captured last month.

More than 120 foreigners have been seized in Iraq since April and more than 30 have been slain.

US troops and Iraqi government forces have reoccupied police stations and secured bridges in the northern city of Mosul, the USmilitary and witnesses said.

Hundreds of US and Iraqi troops Tuesday entered the city, 362 km north of Baghdad, as helicopters flew overhead.

Troops met "very little resistance" in securing several of the dozen or so police stations that had been seized by insurgents, the US military said.

Witnesses said all the five bridges of the city were closed to civilian traffic by US troops which set up concrete and barbed wire barricades.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, was deeply concerned about the situation of civilians caught up in the ongoing fighting in Fallujah, a UN spokesman said Tuesday in New York.

The US military said it was investigating a shooting incident in which a marine shot dead an Iraqi prisoner in Fallujah.

The First Marine Division said it wanted to determine whether the marine acted in self-defense when killing the man on Saturday or violated military law.

An embedded television reporter from the US network NBC reported Monday that a marine had shot dead an unarmed Iraqi prisoner and wounded another in a mosque.

One US soldier was killed and another wounded when insurgents attacked their convoy north of Baghdad on Tuesday, the US military said.

The attack took place at about 10:00 am (0700 GMT) as their convoy was driving to a supply base near the town of Balad, some 80 km north of Baghdad.

Saboteurs blew up two pipelines carrying oil and gas in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, about 250 km north of Baghdad, setting them on fire, Iraqi oil officials said Tuesday.

The two pipelines, one carrying oil and the other gas, were hit overnight at about 11 p.m. (2000 GMT) on Monday in the Riyadh region, some 60 km southwest of Kirkuk.

US forces on Tuesday arrested Naseer Ayaef, deputy head of Iraq's interim parliament and a high-ranking member of a Sunni political party, after a dawn raid on his Baghdad home, a spokesman from his party said.

The arrest, which occurred in spite of Ayaef's immunity, was linked to the Iraqi Islamic Party's opposition to the US military offensive against Fallujah, said the spokesman Iyad al-Samarrai.

A total of 1,210 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the United States launched war against the country in March 2003, latest figures from the Pentagon showed.

Of the dead, 943 were killed in combat and 267 in non-battle circumstances.

A total of 38 US soldiers were killed in the week-long offensive, which was seen as aiming at helping pave the way for general elections in Iraq scheduled for January next year.

Source: Xinhua