Kidnapped French journalist Florence Aubenas, seized in the Iraqi capital Baghdad more than seven weeks ago, has made an appeal for help.
She was seen for the first time since her capture in a video tape released by insurgents. The French government says it is studying the tape which is the first confirmation that the 43-year-old is still alive since her abduction on 5 January.
Ms Aubenas is a journalist with the leftwing newspaper Libération.
There is no date on the tape, but she looks upset and her hair is bedraggled. She is dressed in a grey sweatshirt and black trousers.
She is believed to have been snatched from her car as she was driving near her hotel in central Baghdad. Her Iraqi driver, Hussein Hanun al-Saadi, was also captured.
On the tape, she made an appeal to a French politician, Didier Julia, a member of Jacques Chirac's UMP party, who travelled to Iraq last September on a freelance effort to try to secure the release of two other kidnapped French journalists.
The effort failed and the Paris government denied it had approved his intervention.
The journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, were finally released in December after four months in captivity.
