BAGHDAD (AFP) - Two female Italian aid workers kidnapped in Baghdad three weeks ago were released along with two Iraqi colleagues, making at least 10 the number of people freed in 24 hours, including employees of Egyptian telecoms giant Orascom.
Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, arrived at Rome's Ciampino military airport to be showered with hugs and flowers by their families and colleagues from their aid agency, A Bridge to Baghdad.
Their relatives and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi boarded the Italian air force plane to welcome them, and a host of leading politicians turned out to greet them.
The women, who were seized by armed men September 7 at their Baghdad offices, stepped off the plane smiling broadly and wearing light-coloured long tunics. They crossed the tarmac holding hands and looking relaxed.
"We're fine," they told waiting reporters. After spending a short time with their families the two Simonas were to be taken for questioning by the Rome magistrates investigating their kidnapping.
Berlusconi, who backed the US-led war to oust Saddam Hussein and who has sent some 3,000 Italian troops and police to serve in the US-led coalition in Iraq, described their release as a "moment of joy".
"After so many days, so many nights, so many paths trodden and 16 negotiations launched keeping us all in suspense, the story ends," he told an impromptu news conference in Rome.
Almost simultaneously, Orascom announced that three Egyptians captured last week had also been released.
"We have information on the release of three hostages. They may arrive in Baghdad tonight, but I am waiting to see them with my own eyes," a spokesman said in Baghdad.
The three were kidnapped in western Iraq, together with another Egyptian and two Iraqis employed by the same company and who were released late Monday.
Al-Arabiya television reported late Tuesday that another two Orascom employees had been freed, but this could not be confirmed.
In an uncanny succession of events, the releases confirmed Tuesday came a day after an Iranian diplomat held by the same group detaining two French reporters was released following a 55-day ordeal.
But the life of British hostage Kenneth Bigley -- whose two US colleagues were beheaded by the group of the most wanted man in Iraq last week -- still hung in the balance.
However, a British Muslim delegation said after a 48-hour mission to Baghdad that they had received "very encouraging advices and promises that we hope, inshallah (God willing), will lead to the release" of the 62-year-old engineer.
Bigley is detained by the Tawhid wal Jihad group of top US foe Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who has a 25-million-dollar on his head.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told his Labour party's annual conference in Brighton, England that he refused to apologise for the Iraq war, as he linked the future of Iraq to Britain's national security.
"I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam," said Blair, who nevertheless regretted that intelligence on the deposed president's alleged weapons of mass destruction was flawed.
On the ground, the insurgent enclave of Fallujah, where many of the foreign hostages are believed to have been held, was again pounded by US aircraft overnight.
"Three people were killed and six others wounded," said Dr Rafaa Hiad at the town's main hospital.
A coalition spokesman denied the strike had caused any casualties.
In the capital, explosions rocked the Sunni Muslim Haifa Street area, while US helicopter gunships struck the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, one of Baghdad's mostly densely populated districts.
In southern Iraq, two British soldiers were killed in a rare ambush of a military convoy in this area, a defence ministry spokesman said in London.
The renewed fighting underscored concerns raised by Jordan's King Abdullah II about the possibility of holding elections in January as planned.
The king, who delayed his own parliamentary elections for two years, told the Paris daily Le Figaro: "It appears to me impossible to organise indisputable elections in the chaos currently reigning in Iraq."
His remarks followed warnings from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and comments by US Secretary of State Colin Powell that the insurgency was growing more dangerous as the election target date nears.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld raised the possibility last week that the polls might go ahead in most of Iraq, leaving out the regions most affected by the violence.
But critics argue that polls in which some areas are disenfranchised would not be the sort of "indisputable elections" talked about by the Jordanian king.
In Ukraine, the national security and defense council has decided to gradually reduce the size of the country's 1,600-soldier military contingent in Iraq.