IRAQIS reacted with anger and disbelief to news that British-Iraqi aid worker Margaret Hassan, who worked in Iraq for decades before being kidnapped a month ago, had been killed by her captors.

FIERCE battles between insurgents and US and Iraqi forces killed at least 16 people yesterday in the latest in a wave of clashes that has swept Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland.

Colleagues of kidnapped Irish-born aid worker Margaret Hassan said they cannot yet rule out the possibility that a mutilated body of a Western woman found in Fallujah is the captured humanitarian.

US Marines today found the mutilated body of what they believe was a Western woman during a sweep of a street in central Fallujah.