Violence Rocks Baghdad As Clock Ticks Down For British Hostage

BAGHDAD (AFP) - At least 21 Iraqis were killed and more than 100 wounded as fresh violence rocked Baghdad while fears grew for the fate of a British hostage whose two US colleagues were beheaded by their Islamist captors.
The US army launched a fresh offensive on Baghdad`s radical Shiite stronghold of Sadr City overnight that left 15 dead, according to an official from firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr`s movement.
A suicide car-bomb targeting recruits for the Iraqi national guard ripped through a busy shopping area in central Baghdad, killing at least six people, security and medical sources told AFP.
Meanwhile time was running out for a Briton kidnapped by militants from an Al-Qaeda-linked group headed by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, whose two US colleagues were beheaded over the past two days.
The Iraqi justice ministry said it was considering the release of a biologist known as Dr Germ suspected of contributing to an illegal weapons program under Saddam Hussein and one of the two Iraqi women known to be held by the coalition.
"The Iraqi government thinks Rihab Taha is no longer a threat to national security and that she can obtain a conditional release if a bail is paid," ministry spokesman Nuri Abdelrahim Ibrahim told AFP.
But the official said such a release would be unrelated to demands by Zarqawi`s Tawhid wal Jihad group, who initially conditioned the freedom of trio on the release of all women detained by the coalition.
The US military said it had no knowledge of any plans to free Taha.
On Monday night, Tawhid wal Jihad issued a video showing in graphic detail the decapitation of US hostage Eugene Armstrong and extended by one day its 48-hour ultimatum to Washington and London over the prisoners.
His colleague Jack Hensley was beheaded on Tuesday night after neither of two main powers behind the invasion of Iraq showed any sign of yielding to the captors` demands.
The gruesome killings leave British engineer Kenneth Bigley, whose family made a poignant plea for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to meet the kidnappers` demands, the only survivor of the trio kidnapped last week.
On the ground, 15 people were killed and 52 wounded in a US strike on Sadr City overnight, according to an official from Sadr`s movement.
"Right now we are in there. We are fighting the terorists so we can re-establish civil-military operations and get back to the reconstruction projects that the people of Sadr City want," said army spokesman Major Philip Smith.
The sounds of warplanes and artillery pounding Sadr City erupted shortly before midnight and sounded periodically through the night.
A suicide car-bomb targeting recruits for the Iraqi national guard ripped through a busy shopping area in central Baghdad, security and medical sources told AFP on the scene.
"A suicide car-bomb rammed into a group of people gathered to sign up for the Iraqi national guard" at a shopping complex on the central Al-Rabih street, a police officer said. "The suicide bomber drove onto the sidewalk and detonated his charge."
A dozen vehicles in the vicinity of the blast were turned into charred shells and several shopfronts destroyed as panicked residents ran in the debris and through the smoke to rescue the wounded.
An AFP reporter saw people burying body parts on the median strip which cuts the wide boulevard in two, just a short distance from the site of a thwarted car bomb attack on Tuesday.
"I saw about 30 to 40 ING (Iraqi National Guard) recruits lining up and at about 10:20 (0620 GMT) the explosion went off," said a witness who runs an office on the first floor of the shopping complex.
Violence in the capital was compounded by fresh fighting in the Sunni stronghold of Haifa street in Baghdad.
Sporadic but heavy gunfire was heard in the central neighbourhood, which is a mixture of posh high-rises and impoverished alleyways harbouring a loose alliance of Saddam Hussein loyalists and Islamic insurgents.
There was no immediate report of any casualties.
The fresh violence in Iraq came after US President George W. Bush defended his invasion of March 2003 at the United Nations General Assembly.
Bush said the United States had enforced "the just demands of the world" by ousting Saddam in a war that has left world opinion still bitterly divided over the war.
Bush, who said the United Nations risked becoming irrelevant last year by failing to come to consensus on Iraq, called on the world to help that country achieve democracy and stability.
"The UN and its member nations must respond to Prime Minister (Iyad) Allawi`s request and do more to help build an Iraq that is secure, democratic, federal and free," Bush said.
US Secretary General Kofi Annan told the assembly that Iraqi prisoners had been "disgracefully abused" and made veiled references to the United States in a wide-ranging speech calling on all nations to obey the rule of law.
Meanwhile, South Korea announced it had completed the deployment of 2,800 troops in Iraq and added that 800 more soldiers would be dispatched in November, making the Asian country the third largest contributor to coalition troops.
The Korean forces are expected to engage in relief and reconstruction work only and avoid combat.