CAIRO, Oct 28: A visibly shaken Margaret Hassan, the British aid worker kidnapped last week in Iraq, has made another plea for her country to withdraw troops from Iraq and release all female Iraqi prisoners.

In a video broadcast on Wednesday evening on Al Jazeera network, the 59-year-old worker for Care International made a direct appeal to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. She also said her organization should stop its work in Iraq and close its office in Baghdad.

CARE, whose Iraq operations are headed by Ms Hassan, already suspended its operations in Iraq last week in response to the abduction.

Ms Hassan, who was born in Dublin and is in her early 60s, is married to an Iraqi, and has worked for 25 years in the aid field in Iraq. She strongly opposed international sanctions imposed on Iraq through the 1990s and warned ahead of the US-led invasion that there would be a humanitarian catastrophe.

Strenuous British efforts to free British engineer Ken Bigley after he was kidnapped in mid-September and twice shown on video came to naught. Bigley had his throat cut on October 7.-dpa