RAMADI, Iraq (AFP) - At least two Iraqis were killed in clashes between US troops and insurgents in the restive city of Ramadi, as a US soldier was killed when a car bomb hit a convoy in Baghdad.
US marines said the fighting erupted in Ramadi after a patrol came under fire during a pre-dawn search of houses for weapons in the city, west of Baghdad.
Doctors at a local hospital said at least two people were killed and eight wounded, while the military said three marines were wounded.
"We have known for some time that the area was a hub for IED (improvised explosive device) making," said Captain Sean Kuehl, explaining why the marines conducted the raid which he said netted 15 suspects.
Adding to the tension, police and marines said a car bomb exploded in the path of a US convoy near a mosque in the city without causing casualties or damage.
In nearby Fallujah, US planes conducted another air strike overnight against what the military said was a suspected safehouse for militants loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged frontman for the Al-Qaeda terror network in Iraq.
Hospitals reported three dead.
Both US and Iraqi officials say the twin cities are nerve centres for an ever more vicious and calculated insurgency, with more suicide car bombings and the targeting of Westerners as easy bargaining chips for financial and political demands.
US and Iraqi forces have been at the gates of Fallujah since mid-October amid talk of an imminent assault to regain the city from the grip of insurgents ahead of nationwide elections in January.
Japan, another US ally in Iraq, was racing against the clock to secure the release of a young Japanese man kidnapped by militants, with less than 24 hours to go before a deadline for his execution.
The group has threatened to behead 24-year-old Shosei Koda unless Japan pulls some 600 troops out of Iraq -- a demand Tokyo has rejected.
Koda had reportedly gone to Baghdad as a tourist before being kidnapped by a group linked to Zarqawi.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Japan had asked for "the cooperation of 25 countries including Iraq, the United States and Britain."
And London faced another challenge to its commitment to the US-led effort in Iraq.
Kidnapped Briton Margaret Hassan begged anew for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq and the release of Iraqi women prisoners.
Hassan, a British-Iraqi national taken hostage last week, "issued an appeal to Britons to urge British Prime Minister Tony Blair to withdraw his troops from Iraq and not redeploy them in Baghdad", Al-Jazeera television said Wednesday.
Her appeal came as Britain moved 850 crack troops to Babil province south of Baghdad as US soldiers focus on wresting Fallujah from rebel control.
A British military spokesman declined to give further details of the controversial mission, a day after scores of tanks, Land Rovers and other vehicles, packed with soldiers from the Black Watch battalion, left their base in Iraq's relatively calm city of Basra in the south.
The redeployment marks the first time since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq that British troops have left southern Iraq for US-controlled areas, where they are considered more likely to come under hostile fire.
Highlighting the risks of operating around Baghdad, an early morning bomb exploded in the path of a US military patrol under a flyover.
Three US soldiers were wounded, with one later dying, while one and possibly two Iraqi civilians were also killed, the US military said.
An ordnance team was trying to establish whether the explosion was of a car bomb or a roadside bomb, it added.
Witness saw flames spewing from a US army vehicle.
"The impact was so strong I was blown away," said Mohammed Jassem, 42, who had been trying to fix his car at the time just metres (yards) away.
A US soldier was also wounded in the nothern city of Mosul when a bomb hit another patrol, a spokeswoman said.
In another episode of daily violence, a news anchor with Iraq's independent Al-Sharqiya television was killed along with a translator in a drive-by shooting in southern Baghdad on Wednesday, the interior ministry said.

10/28/2004 - 12:51 GMT - AFP