by Jay Deshmukh
BAGHDAD, July 21 (AFP) - Bomb blasts and gunfire killed at least 12 people in Iraq on Wednesday and a group calling itself "Black Flags" threatened to behead six new foreign hostages unless their Kuwaiti employer pulls out of the country.
Adding to the unease, Bulgaria and Poland became the latest US allies here to receive threats on an Islamic website telling them to join the exodus, as a former Filipino hostage headed home after Manila pulled its small but symbolic contingent out of Iraq to save his life.
Amid escalating violence just three weeks after the US-led occupation ended, Iraq called on neighbouring countries for help, saying it wanted joint security cooperation to protect their common borders.
Large-scale bombings have rocked Iraq`s interim government since it became sovereign on June 28 as insurgents conducted attacks aimed at discrediting the new administration, which is struggling to prepare for general elections by January, a senior military official said.
Underscoring the determination of a 15-month-old rebellion, Iraqi officials said a car bomb ripped through Ramadi, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Baghdad, killing three brothers walking down a main road lined with public buildings.
"Three brothers, Sattar, Mustapha and Yussef Khalil were killed in a car bomb explosion," said Doctor Assad Aliwi from the general hospital in Ramadi.
A fourth person died and 14 were wounded in clashes between US troops and rebel forces in the city, hospital and police officials said.
A US military spokesman confirmed that American soldiers were battling insurgents in the Sunni bastion but had no details.
In Baghdad, at least four people were killed when a car bomb ravaged a residential neighbourhood sending body parts hurtling onto the roof of nearby houses, police and witnesses said.
Three mutilated bodies were seen covered in white and green cloth near to where the blast occurred at about 5:30 pm (1330 GMT) down a small side street flanked by low-level apartments in southeast Baghdad, an AFP correspondent said.
Two people were killed and four wounded when a missile hit the seventh floor of a Baghdad hospital, while one US soldier died and six were hurt when their patrol hit a roadside bomb after midnight near the rebel hotbed of Samarra, itself a scene of violence on Tuesday.
In Kirkuk in the north, a policeman died and three were wounded when their patrol was targeted by rocket-propelled grenades, police said.
In another sinister feature of Iraq`s insurgency, a group calling itself "Black Flags" said it had taken three Indians, two Kenyans and an Egyptian hostage and threatened to behead them if their Kuwaiti employer did not pull out Iraq, according to a video aired by Al-Arabiya television.
One of the hooded gunmen, who appeared with a group of presumed hostages, said the company should leave Iraq and close its offices there, threatening to behead a hostage every 72 hours if it failed to comply.
The Egyptian embassy in Baghdad confirmed that a trucker, Mohammed Ali, had been taken. The news came barely 48 hours after another Egyptian truck driver had been released by another group.
Meanwhile, a group calling itself Al-Qaeda Organisation in Europe threatened Poland and Bulgaria with attack unless they withdrew their troops from the country.
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.
Manila, however, bowed to the demands of the abductors of Philippine truck driver Angelo de la Cruz and withdrew its 51 soldiers and police from 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 for 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.
As the violence continued, Iraq called on neighbouring countries for help.
"We have ideas and proposals that we`ll present to the Arab and Islamic countries that are specific to security issues, especially with regard to border and joint security cooperation in order to protect the common borders," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said before a meeting with regional counterparts in Cairo.
The meeting is the first time the ministers from Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and Turkey, as well as host Egypt, have met since the June 28 handover of sovereignty.