BAGHDAD (AFP) - A US soldier at the heart of a prisoner abuse scandal pleaded guilty to a range of charges, as a foreign aid group halted work in Iraq after its Baghdad chief was kidnapped and four children died in a wave of car bombings.
Frantic to stamp out an insurgency that has raged since the US-led invasion, the US military sent warplanes to bomb rebel targets in the restive hub of Fallujah, denying claims by residents that a family of six were killed in one of the raids.
The military insisted it hit targets linked to Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted man, who has claimed responsibility for a series of car-bombings and hostage-takings in the country.
In a rare piece of good news, telecom giant Orascom announced that two of its Egyptian employees had been released by their kidnappers after a month in captivity.
At a US military court near Baghdad airport, Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick pleaded guilty to five charges of abusing prisoners at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, although he did not admit full guilt on all charges.
The first of three military police officers due to appear before a court martial this week, Frederick offered a rare insight into what went on behind the walls of the detention centre where pictures of grinning US soldiers posing by a heap of naked Iraqi men sparked worldwide outrage earlier this year.
The extent of the alleged abuse became even more apparent when a prisoner also testified, describing being hit and humiliated to the point of wanting to die.
Frederick, the highest-ranking soldier accused in the affair, admitted to making an inmate masturbate and punching him, while attaching wires to another prisoner who thought he would be electrocuted and taking photographs for his own pleasure.
Sergeant Javal Davis and Specialist Charles Graner are due to appear before a judge at Camp Victory later this week.
In another blow for war-weary Iraq, the international aid agency CARE said it would suspend operations here after Margaret Hassan was snatched by gunmen in Baghdad on Tuesday, in the latest hostage crisis that has already claimed scores of foreign and Iraqi lives and prompted many other overseas companies to leave.
Britain, Ireland and the United States condemned the abduction and said they would work to release Hassan, who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, is married to an Iraqi and has both British and Iraqi citizenship.
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.
Adding to the tension that is undermining the interim government's efforts to restore stability ahead of national elections promised for January, two car bombs exploded in the restive city of Samarra and another two detonated in Baghdad.
Eight Iraqis, including four children, were killed and at least 20 people wounded when bombs exploded in the path of a US army convoy near a nursery school in Samarra, north of Baghdad, local officials said.
A US military spokeswoman said 11 US troops were among the wounded in what was the first major attack in the city since its was wrested from insurgents in a deadly offensive by American and Iraqi troops at the start of October.
Back in the capital, a suicide car bomb exploded on the road to the airport, killing only the driver, and hours later another car packed with explosives detonated alongside a convoy of US tanks, causing no casualties.
Pushing on with a pledge to eradicate pockets of insurgency ahead of the elections, US air raids destroyed buildings said to belong to Zarqawi and other rebel posts in three separate strikes on Fallujah, west of the capital.
Residents in the Sunni Muslim bastion claimed they pulled a family of six from the ruins of a house hit in a dawn bombing, but the military said this was false.
It was impossible to obtain independent confirmation.
US and Iraqi forces believe that Fallujah has provided refuge for the Jordanian-born Zarqawi and his followers.
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 has ordered Fallujah residents to surrender Zarqawi or face invasion.
Amid the mayhem, Orascom said two of its engineers, Mahmud Turk and Mustafa Abdul Latif, who were kidnapped in Baghdad on September 23, had been freed after Zarqawi's Tawhid wal Jihad group intervened on their behalf with their captors.
In other developments, Egypt announced that a conference on Iraq will be held in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on November 22-23, but there was a question mark over whether Iraqi opposition groups would be invited.
Officials said NATO would begin training Iraqi officers in Norway and Germany next month, as part of a NATO mission offered to Iraq's interim government.
And the United States dropped its last terror-related designation on Iraq, removing it from the State Department's blacklist of "state sponsors of terrorism" by formally rescinding a 14-year-old determination that carried sanctions.