At least 15 killed in Fallujah airstrikes; British Muslim leaders in Iraq

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - At least 15 people were killed and 33 wounded in two separate US airstrikes Saturday on suspected hideouts of a militant group in the Iraqi rebel city of Fallujah, as two British Muslim leaders arrived in Baghdad in a bid to save the life of a British hostage.
The latest airstrike occurred at about 10:00 pm (1800 GMT) and targeted what the US military called a meeting place in the northern part of Fallujah for operatives of presumed Al-Qaeda chief in Iraq Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, whose Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group is blamed for a string of suicide bombings and kidnappings in the country.
"Intelligence sources indicated that approximately 10 terrorists were meeting at this location to plan operations targeting innocent Iraqi civilians and multi-national forces," said the statement.
Two hospitals in the city reported receiving eight dead and 22 wounded including women and children with residents saying that many remained under the rubble.
At least two homes in the area were destroyed while others suffered significant damage, an AFP correspondent in the city said.
An earlier airstrike overnight Saturday on a suspected Zarqawi hideout killed seven Iraqis and wounded 11, including women and children.
Another seven Iraqis -- national guard recruits -- died in a rebel attack near the capital, Baghdad, while a roadside bomb killed a US soldier in the area, bringing to five the number of US troops killed in 48 hours, the military said.
An Iraqi police officer was killed in an attack in the restive town of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad.
In the foreign hostage crisis, Britain sent a delegation from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) to seek the release of engineer Kenneth Bigley, threatened with the same death, by beheading, meted out earlier this week to two Americans kidnapped with him.
Bigley, 62, and the Americans were seized from their Baghdad home this month by Unity and Holy War operatives.
A statement posted on a website on Saturday claimed that he had already been executed, but the British authorities dismissed the statement.
Daud Abdullah and Musharraf Hussain of the MCB arrived in Baghdad late Saturday and said they would hold talks with religious, civic leaders and politicians and try to make contact with Bigley`s kidnappers.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Saturday "we`ll continue to do all we can for Ken Bigley."
The engineer`s family continued to issue desperate pleas for his life as did the families of six Egyptians kidnapped recently, although no group has yet claimed responsibility for kidnapping the men, all employed by the Egyptian telecom giant Orascom.
The fate of two missing Italian aid workers remained unknown, despite two claims that the two women had been killed.
An Italian daily Saturday published around 40 grisly pictures of beheadings of hostages in Iraq and Pakistan, riding roughshod over the feelings of families and friends of the two young aid workers, Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, reported executed by their abductors.
Il Foglio said the move was "to protest against the indifference, passivity, ignorance and submission with which the politicians and the media, above all in Italy, are facing up to the religious war and the clash of civilisations going on in the world."
In New York, visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi pledged that Iraq`s own forces would secure the country in time for January elections, but demanded broader participation from the international community.
"I appeal to all representatives from the countries gathered here to help Iraq defeat the forces of terrorism and help Iraq build a better future for the people of Iraq," Allawi told the UN General Assembly.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, meanwhile, told the New York Times that Allawi wanted to organise a conference including G-8 and Middle Eastern countries in October to boost Iraq`s electoral process.
Allawi insisted elections would go ahead as planned, but even US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that no-go zones like Fallujah might have to be excluded from the voting.
US President George W. Bush on Saturday called US opponents in Iraq some of the most brutal men on earth and acknowledged that serious problems remained in many Iraqi cities.
But he said in his weekly radio address that he still hopes to secure international support for US forces fighting insurgents in Iraq where they have suffered more than 1,000 deaths since the March 2003 invasion.
In response, the Democratic leader in the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi of California, said the war in Iraq has been "a grotesque mistake that has diminished our reputation in the world and has not made America safer."
Meanwhile, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf agreed, telling CNN in an interview that the world was "more dangerous" since the war.
In another interview, with Newsweek magazine, Musharraf warned that sending in more foreign troops was not the answer to the violence.
"I think the visibility of any foreign troops ... is not at all welcome in Iraq. Nobody likes foreign troops," he said.