"It is definitely a Caucasian woman with long blonde hair," said a military official, who cut open a cover that had been over the corpse.

Another unit stumbled across eight Arab men, apparently Iraqis, who had been shot in the head execution-style, and laid out in two courtyards, four in each, said an AFP reporter embedded with the marines.

The gruesome discoveries were made as marines moved through the south of Fallujah, hunting out the remaining rebels after a week of fierce fighting to regain control of the city.

"It is a female ... missing all four appendages, with a slashed throat and disemboweled, she has been dead for a while but only in this location for a day or two," said Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the Navy Corps, who had inspected the body.

An AFP photographer embedded with the marines noted that the woman was wearing a blue dress and her face was completely disfigured.

Sweeps of rubble-strewn neighbourhoods in Fallujah have uncovered a grisly underworld of hostage slaughterhouses, prisons and torture chambers as well as the corpses of Iraqis who had been executed, marines say.

Later in the day, a unit of marines found the eight men, all fairly burly and aged between about 20 and 45, in central Fallujah, said the AFP reporter.

The bodies had no uniforms or distinguishing features to identify them, but two were simply dressed in their underwear, he said.

Surviving hostages have also been found, but only one has been a foreigner -- a Syrian driver who was abducted with two French journalists in August.

Two foreign women have been abducted in Iraq and remain missing.

One, Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole, has blonde hair, the other, British aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, has chestnut-coloured hair.

Borcz, married to an Iraqi and a resident in Iraq for 30 years, was abducted late last month. She has appeared in two video cassettes appealing to the Polish government to help her but her fate is unknown.

Hassan, the Iraqi head of relief agency CARE International, was kidnapped on her way to work in Baghdad on October 19 and has appeared in three videos.

She also holds Iraqi citizenship after marrying an Iraq and is a long-term resident of the country. Her fate too is unknown.

A marine staff sergeant, who deals with detainees, said it appeared as though a kidnapping squad used Fallujah to hold its captives.

"We broke a safe in one room and found a list of Iraqi hostages," he said.

"These guys have a kidnap squad, working outside Fallujah and bringing their victims to the city," he told AFP, without giving his name.

Just one-and-a-half days into the operation, marines found alive Mohammed al-Jundi, the Syrian driver who was kidnapped with French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot.

"I have no news of the French hostages," the staff sergeant added.

More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since April by different militant groups and many have been beheaded.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.