by Dia Hamid
SAMARRA, Iraq, July 21 (AFP) - Seven Iraqis and a US soldier were killed in a fresh bout of violence around the rebel hotbed of Samarra as Iraq called on its neighbours Wednesday for help in restoring security to the country.
Adding to the instability, Bulgaria and Poland became the latest US allies in Iraq to receive purported threats on Islamic websites, as a former Filipino hostage headed home after Manila quit the country to spare his life.
Iraq's interim government faces the unenviable task of quelling an insurgency that festered during the US-led occupation and carries out almost daily attacks against the security forces, targeted assassinations and hostage-taking of foreigners in an apparently organised campaign of chaos.
Underscoring those troubles, fierce fighting flared overnight between US soldiers and insurgents in Samarra, a restive town north of Baghdad that has been the scene of frequent clashes during the 15-month revolt.
Samarra's main hospital said it received five bodies and another eight wounded people from the fighting, which was triggered when a US military post on the northern edge of the city came under attack.
One US soldier was also killed and six injured when their patrol hit a roadside bomb shortly after midnight on a road in Duluiyah, southeast of Samarra, a US military spokesman said.
Police also said the mutilated body of an Iraqi scientist and an unidentified corpse were found in the city in the early hours of Wednesday.
Elsewhere, a policeman died and three were wounded Wednesday morning in the northern city of Kirkuk when their patrol was targeted by rocket-propelled grenades, police said.
While in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, four members of a special security unit charged with protecting the country's power installations were injured when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb, according to hospital sources.
As the violence raged, Iraq called on neighbouring countries for help, saying it wanted joint security cooperation to protect their common borders.
"We expect our neighbours to stand behind the Iraqi people and give more than words to help restablish sovereignty for a peaceful Iraq," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters ahead of a meeting with regional counterparts in Cairo.
Wednesday's meeting is the first time the ministers from Iraq, its neighbours Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and Turkey, as well as host Egypt, have met since the US-led occupation transferred power to an interim government last month.
Meanwhile, a group calling itself Al-Qaeda Organisation in Europe threatened Poland and Bulgaria with attack unless they withdrew their troops from the country, but both Warsaw and Sofia dismissed the message.
"We maintain the position we have expressed many times that you should never act under pressure from terrorists. You should never give in to them," Deputy Defence Minister Janusz Zemke was quoted as saying by the PAP news agency.
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolai Svinarov told journalists in Sofia that the government did not take "such threats very seriously."
Manila, however, bowed to the demands of the abductors of Philippine truck driver Angelo de la Cruz and withdrew its 51 soldiers and police out of Iraq one month ahead of schedule to save the 46-year-old father of eight from beheading despite objections from Baghdad and Washington.
The trucker left Baghdad earlier to Abu Dhabi for a medical check up before he travels home to be reunited with his anxious family after a two-week drama that has gripped his compatriots.
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo has strongly defended her decision to withdraw from Iraq, but the withdrawal of the Philippines may be a symbolic blow to the caretaker government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia annouced that security forces killed two wanted suspects in a late-night shootout in the capital of the oil-rich kingdom.
One of the dead was on the kingdom's most wanted list, the interior ministry announced, quoted by the official SPA news agency.