Tributes were paid in Europe and Iraq to the murdered Baghdad aid worker Margaret Hassan who was known by the people she helped as "Mama Margaret".

In Parliament, Tony Blair paid tribute to a woman who spent "30 years dedicated to working for the good of the people of Iraq".

Mary McAleese, the Irish President, added: "Margaret was remarkable in her love for and devotion to the Iraqi people.

"It is a cruel irony that Margaret's captors did not show to her the same humanity and kindness which she demonstrated daily to those around her. All right-thinking people will be appalled by the senseless killing of this innocent woman,"

More than 1,000 mourners, including 100 schoolchildren in uniform, packed a parish church in Kenmare, County Kerry - the birthplace of Mrs Hassan's mother, Mary - to remember the murdered aid worker, who had both Iraqi and British passports.

Married to an Iraqi for 30 years, Mrs Hassan had converted to the Muslim faith.

"This cold-blooded murder should not leave people without hope in their lives,".Father Tom Crean, the Kenmare parish priest, told the mourners. "Our hearts just cry in pain with Margaret's family."

Mrs Hassan, 59, was abducted on October 19 on her way to work at the relief agency CARE International in Baghdad, where she was in charge of a team of 60 Iraqis running health and water programmes across the country.

Several times before her death, her kidnappers - who are still unidentified - released videos of her in captivity, including one in which she appealed to the Prime Minister to pull British troops out of Iraq.

Yesterday, the al-Jazeera television station said it been given a video showing her death. The tape, which has not been broadcast, showed a gunman leading her, blindfolded, into a room where she was killed by a single shot.

Mrs Hassan is believed to have been held and killed near Fallujah, the Sunni Muslim city that has been at the centre of the Iraqi insurgency until a huge military offensive began ten days ago.

She is the first woman hostage to be killed in Iraq, and the second British national after Ken Bigley. Her body has not yet been recovered despite a plea from her husband, Tahsin Hassan, for her killers to return it to him.

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