THE mutilated corpse of a Western woman found by US Marines in Fallujah is being DNA tested to see if it is the remains of the murdered aid worker Margaret Hassan, The Times has learnt.

The disembowelled body, with hands and lower legs cut off, was found near the bridge over the Euphrates River in west Fallujah on Sunday, wrapped in a white, brown and red striped blanket and a blue robe. The Marines who found it said it was a Western woman.

First reports indicated that the victim had been blonde, but photographs seen by The Times yesterday showed greying brown hair. “The Americans recovered the body and are now DNA testing it. It is too early to say whether it is Margaret Hassan,” a British official said.

The body is believed to have been flown out of Iraq for the testing. The woman photographer who took the pictures while with the Third Battalion of the Fifth Marines Regiment said that her unit was “80 per cent” convinced that the body was that of Mrs Hassan, 59, the Iraqi director of the charity CARE International. “Her hair was brown with grey strands,” said the photographer, who also found the bodies of an Iraqi man and woman nearby, shot to death and locked in a last embrace.

Diplomatic sources who have seen the video of Mrs Hassan being shot with a pistol at point-blank range said that the damage to the face and skull of the body found in Fallujah was consistent with that form of murder. “She had been shot in the head. That’s why half the head was missing,” the photographer, who asked not to be identified, said. The body was clothed in a similar garment to the dark-coloured robe that Mrs Hassan was last seen wearing. The corpse was found in a dead-end street after the 3/1 Marines battalion had made a rapid push south from the northwestern edge of the city. It was found by a second force that was clearing houses in a more methodical manner.

The body appeared to have been carried from one of the houses in the Jolan district, the heartland of the Fallujah insurgency, and dumped in the street. “They put her right on the street to be found,” the photographer said.

Reports that the victim was blonde led many to believe that it may have been a 54-year-old Polish-Iraqi woman abducted from her house in Baghdad soon after Mrs Hassan.

The body is to be taken outside Iraq for DNA tests. The results are expected to be completed soon.

Mrs Hassan’s husband, Tahsin, was yesterday said by relatives to be too distressed to talk about efforts being made to trace his wife’s remains. While some of those gathered at his home in Baghdad still harbour doubts that Mrs Hassan has been murdered, a British investigation team said that they are certain that the recording of her murder was genuine.

While Mrs Hassan’s sisters and brother have gathered in London to await news, more than a thousand mourners gathered in her home village of Kenmare, Co Kerry, for a special ecumenical service. “Our hearts cry in pain with Margaret’s family,” the parish priest, Father Tom Crean, said. He led prayers for the return of her body so that people could “fully honour and celebrate her life”.

Tony Blair led tributes in the House of Commons. He told MPs: “The whole House will wish to express their grief at what’s happened to Margaret Hassan and to join in paying tribute to her for 30 years dedicated to working for the good of the people of Iraq.”

Michael Howard, the Opposition leader, said: “This murder of an innocent woman — a Muslim woman who dedicated her entire life to the welfare of the people of Iraq — shows yet again that we are up against barbaric terrorists who want to destroy Iraq’s future. We must stand steadfast in the face of their terror.” The Muslim Council of Britain was among those to express its condemnation yesterday: “Mrs Hassan had served the Iraqi people tirelessly for most of her adult life and it is appalling her goodness has been repaid with murder.”

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