Missing French journalist Florence Aubenas, looking pale and distraught, appeared on a video Tuesday in her first appearance since she went missing on January 5.

The veteran war correspondent for the daily Liberation and her Iraqi translator were last seen leaving her Baghdad hotel. The video was dropped at the offices of an international news agency in Baghdad.

Appearing alone in front of a maroon-coloured background, Aubenas looked tired and said she was in bad health. She called upon French deputy Didier Julia to help release her.

"Please help me, my health is very bad," she said in English. "Please, it is urgent now. I also especially (urge) Mr Didier Julia, the French deputy to help me. Please Mr Julia help me, it is urgent, help me."

Before the video, there had been no firm word on the fate of the 43-year-old who previously has covered Kosovo, Algeria, Rwanda, and Afghanistan in her 19 years with Liberation.

Julia, a headstrong lawmaker from President Jacques Chirac's governing party, caused an uproar in September when he budged, mediating for the release of the then kidnapped French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot. The two men were released in December after four months of captivity.

The news came as hundreds of people inspected corpses at a hospital morgue in Hillah yesterday, following the deadliest bombing in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Relatives weeped and beat their chests, trying to identify friends and family who died in a suicide bombing that killed at least 120 people.

(China Daily March 2, 2005)