Footage of kidnapped UK-born aid worker Margaret Hassan with her hands bound

Footage of kidnapped UK-born aid worker Margaret Hassan with her hands bound has been shown on Al-Jazeera, the Arabic TV station said today. Hundreds have been killed in a wave of bombings, mortar attacks and shooting sprees since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.. Four Iraqi National Guardsmen were killed and up to 80 injured after a mortar attack on a base north of Baghdad, the US military said today. He’d better watch out because the Black Watch families are going to be after him at the next election and he might just come to regret that.”Tommy Sheridan, the leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, was also outspoken in his criticism of the decision.”It’s bad enough young men from Scotland’s housing schemes and towns are sent to Iraq to kill and be killed for Tony Blair and the Union Jack but they are being sent into even greater danger for the disastrous incompetence of George Bush who is pulling the world into catastrophe.”. Mr Scott, a former Black Watch warrant officer whose family has served in the regiment for five generations, warned of an electoral payback for Chancellor Gordon Brown in his constituency of Dunfermline East.”I wrote to Gordon Brown about my fears of body bags of Black Watch soldiers coming home to Fife and he responded saying: ‘Your comments are noted,’” said Mr Scott, a former Labour councillor.”I think that’s disgusting when lives are at stake. It’s a bloody disgrace how the Government has treated them, they’re stabbing them in the back and trying to disband them at the same time.”His criticism was echoed by Rob Scott, 61, from Methil, Fife, whose 18-year-old grandson, Private Charles Scott, is serving with the Black Watch.

They don’t know when they are coming home and they are being told very little.”He added: “My boys joined the army because they wanted to, and because they’re proud to be soldiers They know they have to fight but they hate being lied to. However, the first Australian kidnap victim in the country, John Martinkus, a journalist, was freed after 36 hours in captivity.The two dead men were said to have been among a group of three ­ Dalibor Lazarevski, Dragan Markovic and Zoran Naskovski ­ who were seized by insurgents in August while working as builders.. For many of the families of Black Watch soldiers in Basra, the countdown to a Christmas reunion with their loved ones had already begun. But one of the first statements by Sheikh Khaled al-Jumeili after being released was to say that talks with Iraq’s interim government will not be resumed as a protest at his detention.

He added that three other men arrested with him, said to be the police chief of Fallujah and two of his senior officers, have not been released.Sheikh Jumeili said: “The fact is that I’m negotiating on behalf of Fallujah people ­ civilians, children, women ­ who have no power apart from being represented by somebody. Since the situation has got to this, each side can go wherever they want and we don’t want to talk about negotiations.”The interim government’s National Security Adviser, Kassim Daoud, insisted yesterday that Fallujah will be attacked unless its people hand over the Jordanian militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Asked when the offensive will begin, he responded: “We have a plan and we will stick to it.”It also emerged yesterday that two Macedonians taken hostage by a militant group were reported to have been beheaded in Iraq yesterday. Fallujah, the rebel stronghold surrounded by US troops, experienced a moment’s respite from large-scale clashes yesterday amid reports that the Americans were awaiting reinforcements.
The city has been the scene of a succession of strikes since it was surrounded last Thursday in a bid to regain control of the Sunni stronghold. “We are operating against terrorist infrastructures set up within residential areas and attacking us from there,” a spokesman said.Israel’s embattled Prime Minister Ariel Sharon – facing a growing revolt from right wingers in his own Likud party over his plan for disengagement from Gaza – last night agreed in principle to the establishment of a committee to consider the implications of a referendum on the plan.

The report says the destruction was committed in a manner that was “time-consuming, deliberate and comprehensive, rather than in the heat of the battle”.It calls on the United States and European countries who fund the rehousing of Palestinians left homeless by Israeli action to demand reparations for victims or compensation for donors because of the unlawful nature of the destruction.The report also calls on Caterpillar Inc the US-based company that supplies Israel with powerful D9 bulldozers to suspend sales of equipment used in illegal demolitions.Israel’s Foreign Ministry said soldiers did their utmost to avoid harming Palestinian civilians but suggested this was not always possible. But he again made clear that he did not favour a referendum and he was determined to force through a decision on the disengagement plan in the Knesset next week.. The view takes in a gooseneck-shaped bend in the Colorado River and a breathtaking series of stratified mesas climbing thousands of feet over a vast horizon. Following the latest leases, one broad expanse of rock in full view of Dead Horse Point could soon be covered in oil wells.It’s the same story at one of the most celebrated, and most visited, monuments in Arches. Every day, hundreds of tourists make the stunning mile and half climb to Delicate Arch – a fragile ring of sandstone standing on a slick scooped out rocky hollow, with extraordinary views of the snow-capped La Sal mountains. Directly in the line of this view is the Dome Plateau above the Colorado river. It, too, is line for development by the oil and gas industry.“They’re taking away the last few truly remote and rugged places left in this country, and for what? The oil that’s here is a drop in the bucket,” said Liz Thomas, a staff attorney for SUWA based in Moab, the main tourist centre in southeastern Utah.