Hostage Hassan Pleads for Her Life

A video showing Margaret Hassan, the kidnapped director of aid agency Care International, pleading for British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq, was today broadcast on Arabic television.

The al-Jazeera channel screened footage showing the Dublin-born Ms Hassan, who has lived in Iraq for more than 30 years, weeping as she appealed for help.

"Please help me," she begged. "This might be my last hour. Please help me. The British people, tell Mr Blair to take the troops out of Iraq and not bring them here to Baghdad. That's why people like myself and Mr [Kenneth] Bigley have been caught. Please, please, I beg of you."

Ms Hassan's appeal was aired three days after she was abducted by gunmen on her way to work in western Baghdad.

"I don't want to die like Bigley," she said, again referring to the British hostage whose execution was shown in a video posted on an Islamist website this month.

An editor at al-Jazeera, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that the network had received the tape today, but refused to say who had handed it to them. He said the tape did not include any claim of responsibility, and did not show any of the kidnappers.

Bigley was seized at his home in a Baghdad suburb along with two US nationals, who were beheaded within days. He was the first Briton to be taken hostage and murdered in what has become a wave of kidnappings by insurgents.

His kidnappers had demanded that US-led authorities met their demand to release all female prisoners being held in Iraq.