There may be a better way to describe these murderous savages than the Sunday Times’ innocuous word “rebels:” Rebels kill Iraqi women as ‘betrayers’ of Islam.

THE terrible screams will haunt Najat al-Alloussi every time she remembers her last telephone conversation with her kidnapped daughter. “Mama, mama,” cried Hadeel, 24. “They have just executed my husband in front of my eyes. Please help me. They just shot him in the head. Please help me, mama.”

A male voice then told Alloussi, a prominent Iraqi gynaecologist: “We have killed him and now we shall kill your daughter as well.”

She begged for the young woman’s life, promising to hand over gold, cash and a valuable building if her captors would set her free. But the line went dead.

Two bags containing the bodies of her daughter and son-in-law, graduates in medicine who had taken internships at al-Qaem hospital close to Iraq’s border with Syria, were dumped near their Baghdad home 48 hours later. Alloussi’s daughter had been shot in the heart.

The couple were apparently suspected of having tipped off US forces that insurgents were being treated in their hospital.

Whatever the reason she was targeted, Hadeel was one of a growing number of Iraqi women to have fallen prey to insurgents killing those in prominent positions. Some die because their work brings them into contact with American or Iraqi officials, others because their advocacy of more rights for women offends certain religious fundamentalists.

A few seem to have been singled out for failing to conform to an extreme Islamic code of dress and for abandoning traditional lives at home.

Zeena al-Qushtaini, a divorced mother who owned one of Baghdad’s best known pharmacies and had contracts with coalition forces, dressed in western clothes and mingled with women activists.

“Lady Zeena”, as she was known, was wearing a diamond necklace and ring when she was shot twice in the head after being abducted. Her body was found dressed in a full-length black abaya that she would never have chosen to wear, the headscarf covered in blood.