BAGHDAD (AFP) - Britain joined Iraq`s US-backed government in facing down a chilling ultimatum to execute a British and two American hostages, as Islamists claimed the gruesome beheading of three Kurds.
Loyalists of Iraq`s most wanted man, suspected Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, have purportedly served London and Washington with a 48-hour deadline to release Iraqi women from two prisons or see the hostages executed.
More than 400 Iraqis have been killed this month alone in an explosion of violence that the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and its foreign military backers appear powerless to control four months before scheduled elections.
As Allawi was locked in security talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London, at least three people were killed and two wounded when US marines again opened fire on Sunni Arab insurgent enclave of Fallujah, medics said.
Their meeting came 24 hours before the hostage-takers` ultimatum was expected to expire.
"Our governments are working closely on it," Blair told a press conference.
The Iraqi leader added: "We are trying our best working on the issue of hostages and hopefully we will achieve some good results."
Blair called on the world to forget disagreements on the war and unite against the terror engulfing Iraq, calling the conflict "the crucible in which the future of this global terrorism will be determined".
Allawi pledged his government would stick to the timetable of holding elections next January despite the rocketing bloodshed and called on the United Nations to help make them a success.
In a videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera early Saturday, Zarqawi militants said their American and British captives would be executed within 48 hours unless their governments bowed to their demands to release Iraqi women prisoners.
Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene "Jack" Armstrong and British engineer Kenneth Bigley were abducted by gunmen from their smart Baghdad home on Thursday.
The US military has said only two Iraqi women, both of them high-security detainees believed to have been instrumental in Saddam Hussein`s weapons programmes, were being held in the country.
Hensley`s wife Patty made a sombre plea for mercy and the trio`s release in a prepared statement addressed to the kidnappers on CNN television.
Bigley`s brother Philip made a similar appeal on Al-Arabiya television from his home in Liverpool in northwest England.
As the hostage crisis spiralled out of control, an Iraqi militant group paraded 15 captive national guardsmen in video footage aired by Al-Jazeera television and threatened to execute them in 48 hours if a Shiite radical militia commander is not released.
Calling itself the Mohammed bin Abdullah Brigade, the group demanded the immediate release of Hazem al-Araji, representative of Shiite radical leader Moqtada Sadr for the Baghdad pilgrimage district of Kadhimiya, the television reported.
Another Sadr aide in the Iraqi capital denied his movement had any connection to the kidnappers.
Separately, Al-Qaeda-linked killers claimed to have executed three Kurds taken hostage in Taji, north of Baghdad, in a statement posted on an Islamist website.
The trio were "soldiers with the traitor Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)" from the town of Zakho on the Turkish border," said the statement in the name of the military wing of the Army of Ansar al-Sunna.
Its authenticity could not be independently verified.
Poor-quality video footage attached to the statement showed the three young men making brief comments, apparently identifying themselves, before their throats were slit and heads placed on top of their torsos.
The same group last month killed 12 Nepalese workers, and posted grisly footage of their execution on an Internet site.
Police in the northern city of Kirkuk said about a dozen Turkish truck drivers had been either killed or abducted in insurgent strongholds north of Baghdad over the past 24 hours. Three Lebanese and their Iraqi driver were also reported missing.
However one hostage was freed on Sunday. Jordanian civil servant Alaa Thabet Lazim was rescued from his captors by Iraqi security forces following a month-long ordeal.
In smouldering violence, an Iraqi soldier and a civilian were killed when a suicide bomber blew up a car alongside a joint US-Iraqi patrol near the insurgent stronghold of Samarra, the US military said. Three US and three Iraqi soldiers were also wounded.
A child was killed in the central Shiite city of Hilla, when a car bomb exploded, also wounding three adults, police said.