Humanitarian Aid Director Is Kidnapped

Gunmen Tuesday kidnapped the head of the CARE humanitarian group in Iraq, a British-born woman in her 60s who has been critical of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and worked for three decades to improve living conditions here.

The kidnapping of Margaret Hassan triggered appeals for her release from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Muslim humanitarian groups.

Hassan’s abduction occurred on a day when militants fired mortar rounds at an Iraqi national guard base north of the capital, killing five soldiers and wounding 80. An American contractor working for a Halliburton unit died in a separate mortar attack on a U.S. base in Baghdad.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have said they expected violence to escalate during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting that began last week.

Blair decried the kidnapping after he met with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

“This is someone who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, someone who is immensely respected, someone who is doing their level best to help the country. I think it shows you the type of people we are up against,” Blair told reporters. “We don’t know which group it is, so there’s really a limit at this stage to what I can say to you. We will do whatever we can, obviously.”

Blair’s government is weighing a U.S. request to redeploy some of Britain’s 9,000 soldiers from relatively peaceful southern Iraq to more dangerous areas near Baghdad -- presumably to free U.S. troops for an assault on Fallouja and other insurgent strongholds in the Sunni Triangle.

Some members of the British Parliament are opposed to sending soldiers to the more volatile U.S.-controlled sector when public opposition to the war has reduced Blair’s popularity.

Hassan was abducted about 7:30 a.m. as she headed to her office. Hours later, the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera broadcast a video of Hassan wearing a white blouse and sitting on a couch. Although she appeared to be speaking, the tape contained no audio. Al Jazeera reported that an “armed Iraqi group” claimed responsibility for the abduction, but did not identify it.

No demands have been made, and CARE officials said they had not been contacted by Hassan’s abductors.

“As of now we are unaware of the motives,” CARE said in a statement released to Associated Press. “As far as we know, Margaret is unharmed.”

Early today, CARE Australia, which coordinates the international agency’s Iraq operations, announced that it had suspended operations in Iraq because of the abduction, but it said staff members would not be evacuated.

By most accounts, Hassan, who holds British and Iraqi citizenship, is an unlikely kidnapping victim. She is married to an Iraqi and chose to stay in Iraq in March 2003 -- when U.S. and British warplanes bombed the country -- to carry out humanitarian assistance and as an act of solidarity with her adopted country.

Hassan was a vocal critic of international sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, arguing that the Iraqi people were suffering greatly. CARE officials said she had been working to rebuild water and sanitation systems and hospitals and clinics.

Officials of Islamic Relief, a charity based in Birmingham, England, recalled that Hassan had spoken to them in 2002 about Iraqis’ suffering during a decade of economic sanctions.

“We call for whoever is holding her hostage to think of her family and the good work she is doing in Iraq,” Islamic Relief spokesman Adeel Jafferi told the British Broadcasting Corp. “It’s Ramadan, it’s a time of peace and goodwill, and in this particularly holy month they must think of the family of Margaret and the people she is trying to help.”

Kidnappings have become pervasive in Baghdad, where hostages are used by a number of groups for financial and political ends. Like attacks aimed at Iraqi government personnel, the kidnappings have served to unsettle the interim Iraqi government and sow fear and panic among foreigners working in the country. To date, more than 150 foreigners -- including seven women -- have been kidnapped and at least 30 killed. All seven women have been released.

Iraqi officials said the attack on the Iraqi national guard brigade headquarters in Mashahidah, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, apparently was timed to coincide with a regular 9:30 a.m. formation. About 300 guardsmen were awaiting their paychecks when six mortar rounds slammed into the compound.

At a garrison in Baghdad, an American contractor working for Halliburton’s KBR was killed and a U.S. soldier was wounded Tuesday in a predawn mortar and rocket barrage, officials said.

In northern Iraq, insurgents detonated explosives late Monday and set fire to a crucial oil pipeline about 10 miles north of the refinery in Baiji. The state-run Northern Oil Co. did not report whether the damage would affect exports. The pipeline connects the Baiji oil refinery with Turkey.

Southwest of Baghdad, nearly 700 U.S. troops and Iraqi national guardsmen began swarming over a vast agricultural region early today as part of an operation to arrest insurgents.

Marines launched the offensive in northern Babil province in response to repeated mortar and rocket attacks on a U.S. camp being built in Yousifiya, a farming town once controlled by insurgents.

The military invaded the town this month to restore order and cut off reported ties between insurgents in Yousifiya and Fallouja.

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Times staff writer John Daniszewski in London and special correspondent Caesar Ahmed contributed to this report. Times wire services were used in compiling it.