Dozens Killed As U.S. Troop Deaths In Iraq Top 1,000

BAGHDAD, Sept 8 (AFP) - Fourteen US soldiers were killed within 24 hours as the US death toll hit 1,001 Tuesday amid fierce fighting in a Shiite rebel bastion in Baghdad.
The grim milestone for US forces -- which a Pentagon official said included three US civilian officials -- was reached amid continued fighting in the embattled country.
US aircraft pounded the rebel citadel of Fallujah late Tuesday, killing up to 100 insurgents, the US marines said, while gunmen kidnapped two Italian women aid workers and two Iraqis from their offices in Baghdad.
Fierce clashes raged in Baghdad`s Sadr City, with smoke billowing over parts of the over-populated slum and jets roared above.
The health ministry said 40 Iraqis were killed and more than 270 wounded in overnight fighting between US forces and combatants loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr.
Sadr aide Sheikh Naim al-Qaabi said 15 Mehdi Army fighters were killed and 62 wounded.
"Last night was the most intense shelling of Sadr City since the Americans arrived in Iraq," he said, adding that heavy aircraft fire lasted from 11:00 pm (1900 GMT) to 4:00 am.
US army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel James Hutton reported several bomb and small arms attacks on US forces in Sadr City overnight and said two US soldiers were killed there on Tuesday.
One more US soldier was killed by small arms in western Baghdad, the military said.
The US military also reported the deaths of four other troops in separate attacks in the Baghdad area and one north of the capital on Monday.
The same day, the US military had suffered its worst single human loss in months when a car bomb ripped through a joint convoy, killing seven marines and three Iraqi national guards near Fallujah.
Suspected Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi`s group claimed the bombing, as well as the downing of a drone flying over Fallujah, in a video obtained by AFP.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld noted Tuesday that despite the more than 1,000 US deaths, Iraq was better off than before the US-led invasion in March 2003.
Tuesday`s clashes marked the deadliest combat in the Baghdad neighborhood since April, bringing to an abrupt end a lull in fighting between the Mehdi army and US forces that followed Sadr`s call last week for a ceasefire and pledge to join the political arena.
The rebel Iraqi city of Fallujah came under heavy artillery fire and air strikes late Tuesday, sending families fleeing. The US military said up to 100 insurgents died in the bombardment, a reprisal for attacks on marine positions outside the city.
Clouds mushroomed over the city and people fleeing the chaos spoke of corpses and wounded left behind.
Iraq`s hostage crisis showed no signs of abating as two female Italian aid workers, employed by the charity Un Ponte Per Baghdad (Bridge to Baghdad), and two Iraqi relief workers were abducted by a pair of gunmen from their Baghdad offices, a French non-governmental organization worker said.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was due to hold an emergency cabinet meeting in Rome following the reported kidnapping of two Italian women. Italy has around 3,000 troops stationed in Iraq.
For its part, the French government was frantically trying to save two French journalists held hostage since August 20.
French diplomats met Tuesday with influential Sunni Muslim clerics over the fate of Le Figaro journalist Georges Malbrunot and Radio France Internationale correspondent Christian Chesnot.
And in a bizarre twist, masked members of a radical Islamic faction called the Secret Islamic Army of Iraq urged a rival group to free the pair, in a video obtained by AFP Tuesday.
Two brigades of the SIA group called on the Islamic Army of Iraq to release the journalists "as a gesture of cooperation among resistance groups".
A statement purportedly from the Islamic Army of Iraq posted on an Islamist website on Monday gave France 48 hours to accept three new conditions for their release: agreeing to a recent truce offer by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, payment of five million dollars ransom and a pledge not to get involved in Iraq.
And a Turkish truck driver was killed when insurgents fired small arms at some oil tankers parked outside Abbasi, about 22 kilometres (13 miles) from the rebel bastion of Samarra, police said.