BAGHDAD (AFP) - At least six people were killed when two suicide car bombs exploded in Baghdad and at least 47 people died in a series of US air strikes around the Iraqi insurgent bastion of Fallujah.
As the interim government struggled to quell the surging violence, Iraqi police, backed by national guard and US forces, launched a crackdown in the capital, arresting 63 people, including Syrians, Lebanese and Egyptians.
The clampdown came a day after two Americans and a Briton were kidnapped from their smart Baghdad home, increasing fears among a jittery expatriate community after a string of abductions of foreign nationals in the country.
The sharply deteriorating security situation has raised doubts that Iraq will be able to stage elections due in January, but a top US official insisted they would go ahead as planned.
But in sign of Baghdad`s desire to restore normality to Iraq devastated by the US-led war and months of insurgency, national carrier Iraqi Airways announced it would start regular international flights for the first time in 14 years.
On the ground, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a police vehicle and blew it up as a police patrol was stopping people from crossing into the Baghdad troublespot of Haifa Street, where gunbattles raged in the morning.
"We were blocking the street, when I saw this American car. There was a young man wearing a red shirt inside. I told my men to stop this guy, but we couldn`t, he was driving too fast," said policeman Ahmed Mohammed.
A health ministry official said five people were killed and 20 others wounded in the attack, most of them policemen. Doctors reported 27 people wounded.
Pockets of fighting had flared in the morning after a driver tried to ram another explosives-rigged car into a checkpoint and the vehicle was blown up by gunfire, killing the driver and possibly a second occupant, a US spokesman said.
Overnight, US planes hit Zoba village south of Fallujah, demolishing 13 houses, in what the US military called a "precision strike on a terrorist compound" of suspected Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi -- the most wanted man in Iraq.
The health ministry said 44 people were killed and 27 wounded, and a doctor at Fallujah hospital said many of the victims were women and children.
As night fell on Friday, another three people were killed and four wounded when US forces launched a new air strike on the town, controlled by Sunni Muslim rebels who have been waging an insurgency against the interim government and US forces.
Two women and a child were among the wounded, rescue workers said.
Sunni cleric Sheikh Abdelghafur al-Samarrai lashed out at the US military for the bombings.
"If you have intelligence on the location of Zarqawi and his elements why don`t you surround and capture them?" he asked during his weekly sermon in Baghdad.
As many as 60 foreign fighters were killed in one strike on a "confirmed" Zarqawi terrorist meeting site, the US military said.
In the south of Iraq, clashes erupted between British troops and Shiite Muslim militiamen in Basra, wounding one Briton, said an aide to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and the military.
Separately, the body of an Iraqi working for the British army was found in Qibla outside Basra, police said. Next to the corpse was a tag scrawled with the warning: "Such is the fate of anyone who collaborates with the occupier".
The governor of the province of Tikrit, the family stronghold of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, escaped an attempt on his life, local officials said.
Paris backed UN Secretary General Kofi Annan`s description of the US-led war on Iraq as "illegal", with Foreign Minister Michel Barnier saying that the long-held stance was why his country had opposed joining the conflict.
British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said he could deploy extra troops if needed ahead of elections in Iraq due in January, and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi arrived in London for an official visit en route to Washington.
The elections will take place as planned, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said. "We realize they might not be pretty, but they will be held" on time, despite the dire security situation, he said.
Sheikh Nasser Saidi, a cleric close to Sadr also called for elections to be held as scheduled, whatever the situation in the country.
Meanwhile, diplomats pressed ahead with efforts to free the kidnapped Americans and Briton, who were seized in an operation similar to the abduction of two Italian and two Iraqi aid workers who were taken from their office in the capital earlier this month.
Across the Atlantic, a draft report by the top US weapons inspector in Iraq offered a detailed examination of Saddam`s intent to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, but no evidence stockpiles existed when US troops invaded.