The suspected murder of British aid worker Margaret Hassan in Iraq was widely condemned on Wednesday as a wave of unrest across Sunni Muslim hotspots killed more than 20 people, many of them women and children. Amid continued violence, more than 60 Iraqi policemen were reported kidnapped as they returned on Sunday from training in Jordan. Hassan, 59, was seized on her way to work in Baghdad on October 19 by an unknown group of kidnappers.
She was presumed to be the first foreign female hostage to have been murdered in Iraq, and the second British hostage, amid a recent wave of hostage taking in the country.
CARE Australia, the charity organisation that employs Hassan, said it appeared she had been killed, after Al-Jazeera television received a video showing a blindfolded woman hostage being shot in the head.
As her family mourned, Britain voiced outrage over the apparent slaying and European Union Aid Commissioner Paul Nielson warned that it would make it almost impossible for relief work to continue in Iraq.
"This murder of an innocent woman, a Muslim woman, who dedicated her entire life to the welfare of the people of Iraq shows yet again that we are up against barbaric terrorists who want to destroy Iraq's future," leader of Britain's main opposition Conservative party Michael Howard said.
The Arab League also denounced the apparent murder.
"This is a criminal and terrorist act, rejected and denounced according to any criteria ... and inadmissible by every Arab and Muslim whatever the pretext," a spokesman said, adding that the League is "opposed in principle to targeting civilians".
The Vatican's official mouthpiece on Wednesday also strongly condemned what it called Hassan's "barbarous murder", while German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called the feared killing a "terrible crime".
There has been no official confirmation of her slaying.
The news of Hassan's suspected killing came during a wave a violence that saw dozens of people killed or wounded across Iraq as US-led troops battled insurgents in several Iraqi cities.
In Fallujah, where US-led troops launched a massive assault on November 8 to wrest the city from insurgents, a marine officer said on Wednesday "the battle is over.
"We've still got pockets of fighters, but it's becoming more and more scarce," head of civil affairs for the 1st Regimental Combat Team Lieutenant Colonel Leonard DiFrancisci said.
But Arabs voiced outrage at the apparent shooting of an unarmed Iraqi by a US Marine in Fallujah, calling for an immediate investigation of this "war crime".
And there are fears of a humanitarian crisis as US troops have prevented a Red Crescent aid convoy from entering into Fallujah, a city of some 300,000 civilians in normal times, saying it was too dangerous.
But DiFrancisci said the marines expect to allow civilians back soon.
"As far as the return of civilians, it will be at least a week. That would be a guess.
At least 39 US soldiers have been killed and 275 wounded so far in Operation Dawn, with at least five Iraqi troops and more than 1,200 insurgents also killed, the US military said.
The military continued its bid to clear rebels from the northern city of Mosul, while at least 23 people were killed in clashes and attacks elsewhere.
Fourteen people were killed, most of them women and children, and 26 wounded in a bomb explosion and clashes in the town of Baiji, north of Baghdad, police said.
Nine Iraqis were killed in clashes between rebels and US troops in Ramadi, which has been wracked by unrest since last week's US-led assault on nearby Fallujah.
The US military said earlier that minor gunfights had erupted with insurgents over the last few days in Ramadi, which lies in the so-called Sunni Triangle to the north and west of Baghdad.
In the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, insurgents have repeatedly struck US and Iraqi forces with mortars and rockets in recent days.
Daylong fighting erupted there on Monday, killing 36 rebels and wounding four US soldiers, the military said.
In western Iraq more than 60 policemen were seized on Sunday as they returned from training in Jordan, one of only two men who managed to escape the ambush told AFP on Wednesday.
"We were around 65 policemen returning from training in Jordan when around 20 masked gunmen entered into our hotel on Sunday morning in Trebil," Leith Naama al-Kaabi said.
"They hooded all the policemen, tied their hands and took them away," he said.
Iraq's security forces are the targets of almost daily attacks by insurgents across the war-torn country.
On October 16, nine policemen from the Karbala region were killed, also on their way back from a training session in Jordan, when their convoy was ambushed in the so-called "death triangle" south of Baghdad.
Barely a week later, 49 army recruits and their three civilian drivers were shot dead north-east of Baghdad.
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