by Jean-Marc Mojon
BAGHDAD, Sept 2 (AFP) - Iraq's hostage crisis further deepened Thursday when three Turkish truck drivers were reported killed, while a US air strike overnight on the rebel stronghold of Fallujah killed 20 people.
As Paris lobbied the Arab world in a desperate bid to save two reporters kidnapped in Iraq to demand the lifting of a controversial headscarf ban in France, French Muslim leaders in Baghdad to mediate for their release said they were optimistic Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot would be freed.
But Arabic-language satellite television Al-Jazeera said it had received a video showing the execution of three Turkish hostages by a group linked to suspected Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.
Police and medical officers in Iraq told AFP that three Turkish truck drivers were found shot dead on the roadside outside the rebel den of Samarra north of Baghdad, apparently the hostages.
They had been executed two days earlier, with bullet wounds to the head and stomach, a local doctor said. Only two were identified.
On Tuesday, hostage-takers in Iraq released a video and statement announcing the killing of 12 Nepalese. It was the largest massacre of foreign hostages in the country and the gruesome footage sparked a rampage by angry protestors in Kathmandu.
But on Wednesday, seven hostages -- three Kenyans, three Indians and an Egyptian -- were released in Fallujah, a stronghold for Iraq's most extremist groups west of Baghdad.
US jets struck the city overnight in a raid targeting hideouts suspected of belonging to the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi, wanted by the United States for a string of attacks and kidnappings.
Two buildings were destroyed and rescue workers had pulled 20 bodies from the rubble by Thursday morning as bulldozers cleared wreckage and a crowd dug through the debris for body parts and bits of flesh.
"All the wounded are families. Among the dead, there could be two or three children but the bodies are torn to pieces and it's difficult to tell," Doctor Seifeddin Taha of the Fallujah general hospital said.
The US military described the attack as a "precision" strike on "safe houses and meeting locations" for associates of Zarqawi, who has a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head and is blamed for dozens of car bomb attacks in Iraq and .
The city has become associated with the wave of kidnappings of scores of foreigners since April.
In the latest crisis, French diplomats were racing to rescue two French reporters snatched on August 20 by a group calling itself the Islamic Army of Iraq which is demanding France lift a ban on girls wearing the Islamic headscarf in state schools.
The ban came into effect Thursday after France vowed it had to guard its secular traditions, but a delegation of French Muslim leaders visiting Baghdad for talks with local Sunni scholars voiced optimism.
"We leave with confidence and full of hope," delegation chief Abdullah Zekhri told AFP.
"The kidnappers wish to free them but they do not know how to do it because they are afraid about the Americans and also that the hostages could fall into the hands of another group. These are the obstacles to freeing them
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, who has been shuttling between Arab capitals for three days to secure the release of the two hostages, had met the delegation in Amman on Wednesday.
US-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's newspaper had harsh words for French President Jacques Chirac, saying his government had only itself to blame for the kidnappings after refusing to contribute to efforts to restore stability in war-torn Iraq.
"Chirac, who wants to present himself as fair, must take his share of responsibility in the kidnapping of his two compatriots as he opposed all international resolutions aimed at restoring Iraqis' security," Baghdad newspaper said.
Another editorial in the same paper complained that France was proud not to have helped topple the regime of Saddam Hussein and had remained silent while "terrorist attacks were being carried out against the Iraqi people and infrastructure".
In Baghdad, US troops patrolling the streets of the Shiite rebel bastion of Sadr City called on fighters from Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army to turn in their heavy weapons after the firebrand cleric called for a truce.
None of the militiamen in the sprawling Baghdad slum could immediately be seen handing over their rocket-propelled grenade launchers or mortars but a surprise ceasefire ordered by Sadr on Monday has so far been observed.
An aide to Sadr told AFP no deal had been reached yet to set up collection points throughout the Baghdad slum but added that a last round of talks to that purpose was due to be held on Thursday night.
Meanwhile, Poland kicked off two days of consultations with the United States and 11 nations serving under Polish command in Iraq over an expected reduction of Warsaw's forces next year.
Poland, one of the key US allies in Iraq, heads a multinational force of 6,500 administering a swathe of the country south of Baghdad to which it sent more than 2,500 of its own troops after the US-led invasion in March 2003.
But amid strong popular opposition to the troop deployment and continued violent unrest, Poland has said it plans to scale back its military presence next year.