US warplanes strike Fallujah; CARE halts work in Iraq after kidnapping

BAGHDAD (AFP) - US warplanes struck targets in rebel-held Fallujah, while Iraq suffered a fresh blow with international aid group CARE halting operations after the kidnapping of a top relief worker.
Two "terrorist safe houses" linked to Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted man, were destroyed, the US military said Wednesday, although residents claimed a family of six were wiped out in the air strike.
"The house was completely destroyed by a missile dropped from an American plane and we have pulled from the rubble the bodies of four children, a woman and a man," said Bassem Mohammed, a resident of the western city of Fallujah.
It was impossible to obtain independent confirmation.
Determined to regain control of the no-go zone, more than 1,000 joint forces have encircled the city for the past week. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi last week ordered Fallujah residents to surrender Zarqawi or face invasion.
Humanitarian agencies have raised concerns for the welfare of residents in the Sunni Muslim bastion amid near nightly US air raids.
The kidnapping of the CARE official and latest violence once more undermined efforts by the US-backed interim government to restore stability ahead of national elections promised in January.
Margaret Hassan, who was born in Ireland and has lived in Iraq for three decades, was snatched by gunmen in Baghdad on Tuesday, in the latest hostage crisis that has already claimed scores of foreign and Iraqi lives.
"CARE Australia has suspended operations of our work in Iraq effective immediately," Grant Thompson, communications director of CARE Australia, which leads the charity's Iraq operation, told AFP.
Britain, Ireland and the United States condemned the abduction and said they would work to release CARE's top Baghdad staffer, who has both British and -- through her husband -- Iraqi citizenship.
"This is someone who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, someone who is immensely respected, someone who is doing their level best to help the country," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.
He was speaking just days after another hostage, Kenneth Bigley, became the first Briton to be beheaded in the war-battered country.
Hassan's husband made an appeal over the satellite news channel Al-Arabiya. "My wife has no involvement in political affairs. Her activities are purely humanitarian and are aimed at helping the Iraqi people," he said.
Britain's embassy in Baghdad said it was working with the Iraqi authorities to establish what had happened.
Adding to the tension in Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded on the road to the airport, killing only the driver, while a roadside bomb blew up near a US army vehicle but caused no casualties, the army said.
US soldiers in Iraq and the newly-formed Iraqi security forces are near daily targets in an insurgency that has raged since last year's invasion.
Caught in a gunfight, Ahmed Mohammed Ismail, 15, was killed during overnight clashes between rebels and Iraqi security forces near the restive town of Baquba, northeast of the capital, his father said Wednesday.
With the US military focused on resolving the Fallujah stand-off, Washington has called on top ally Britain to move some of its 8,500-strong contingent in the relative calm of southern Iraq to more unstable areas.
Blair said Wednesday that London has not yet decided whether to redeploy 650 troops in Iraq from the south.
"No, a decision has not been taken," he told parliament, adding that a redeployment would have nothing to do with providing a boost to close ally US President George W. Bush ahead of next month's presidential election.
"It has everything, however, to do with the Iraqi elections in January," he said.
Egypt said an international conference on Iraq to prepare for the elections would be held in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on November 22 and 23.
The announcement followed a meeting in Cairo between US Middle East envoy William Burns and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Italian Defence Minister Antonio Martino said the Iraqi government to be elected in January would ask foreign forces operating in the US-led military coalition to leave shortly after it takes office.
"In January there will be elections that will lead to the creation of a fully legitimate Iraqi government which will want to rapidly free itself of coalition forces," Martino told the daily Corriere della Sera.
But he cautioned that the United States and its war allies would not be willing to withdraw troops from the oil-rich country until Iraqi armed forces gained the upper hand over the insurgents.
In Baghdad, a US soldier at the heart of the prisoner abuse scandal at the capital's Abu Ghraib prison pleaded guilty to five charges of maltreatment and indecency at a court martial.
Responding to charges ranging from conspiracy to abuse of prisoners, dereliction of duty, assault and indecency, Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick, however, admitted guilt to only elements of some of the charges.