BAGHDAD, Sept 12 (AFP) - At least 45 people died in a wave of bombings and battles between US troops and rebels on Sunday as the United States expressed confidence the violence would not halt elections in January.
Amid the violence, a persistent hostage crisis ground on with militants threatening to kill two Italian women if Rome did not recall its troops from Iraq within 24 hours, according to an Islamist website.
"If we don't see the Italian troops withdraw from the land of Iraq, we will implement Allah's judgement on them, which will be slaughter," said the Islamic Jihad Organization in Iraq.
The group was the second so far to claim it was holding Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, since they were seized at their Baghdad office, but no pictures of either woman have so far been shown.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini was to leave for the Middle East late Sunday, as Rome pressed on with efforts to win the release of the aid workers.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini flatly rejected the ultimatum, while also expressing doubts about its authenticity.
Sunday's unrest in Sunni Muslim trouble spots came one day after US troops commemorated the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks, blamed on Al-Qaeda.
Loyalists of alleged Al-Qaeda chief in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, claimed attacks on the heavily fortified central Baghdad compound housing the government and the US embassy and on the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
At least 13 people were killed, including two children, and 55 wounded during intense fighting around central Baghdad's Haifa Street, considered a bastion of Saddam loyalists, said the health ministry.
The US military said six soldiers were also wounded.
Mazen al-Tomaisi, a Palestinian working for Saudi and Al-Arabiya television, died as he reported live from Baghdad during the clashes, a colleague said.
Heavy machine gun and assault rifle fire reverberated across Haifa Street for three hours and a tank was deployed to support US troops in an area that is perfect sniper territory with high-rise apartment blocks all around.
A car bomb exploded near the tank, setting it ablaze and witnesses said an angry mob pelted it with stones and danced around it. One man climbed on top, waving a black flag emblazoned with the name of Zarqawi's group Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War).
US helicopters then swooped down over the neighborhood and fired missiles and heavy machine guns into the crowd, killing at least five people.
The US military said the tank was destroyed from the air "to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people."
"Terrorist attacks in Iraq have killed more than 3,000 martyrs and wounded more than 12,000," Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told journalists in the main southern city of Basra, without specifying a time frame.
A recorded voice, said to be that of Zarqawi and released to mark the September 11 anniversary, branded Allawi a number-one target.
Three Polish soldiers were killed and three wounded in an ambush near the Shiite Muslim city of Hilla, the Polish military said.
Also in the area, at least three national guardsmen were killed and three seriously wounded in a double bomb attack, the Poles said.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday the United States was confident elections can be held in Iraq on schedule in January despite the insurgency raging in that country.
"There is an insurgency raging. We see it every day, there's no question about it," Powell said on the NBC television program "Meet the Press." "This is a difficult time as this insurgency still rages and as we work to bring it under control.
"But it will be brought under control," he said. "It's not an impossible task, and when it has been brought under control you will find that the forces that keep Iraq together are stronger than the forces that would pull it apart.
"When that insurgency is put down, what the people of the world will see are Iraqis in charge of their own destiny," Powell said.
"Nobody is planning to postpone the elections," he said. "Prime Minister Allawi has been quite clear about this.
"Most of the country would be in a satisfactory position for elections if they were being held next month," Powell said. "So we have time to deal with the challenges we face.
"We're confident of what we're doing, we're confident of our strategy, we're confident that we've done the right thing in both Afghanistan and Iraq. This is not the time to get weak in the knees or faint about it but to drive on and finish the work that we started."
Asked about cities such as Samarra and Fallujah where US forces are not in control, Powell said: "Our military commanders, working with Iraqi military leaders and the Iraqi interim government, have plans for each one of those areas, to bring them back under government control in time for the election."