BAGHDAD (AFP) - Eight US marines were killed in action in Iraq's rebel heartlands, as a car bomb tore through the Baghdad offices of an Arabic television station leaving at least seven people dead and scores wounded.
And Iraqi police found the head and body of an Asian-looking man, wrapped in a US flag, which they said could be the remains of a Japanese hostage although there was no official confirmation.
US forces, meanwhile, pounded the insurgent hub of Fallujah with the heaviest bombardments in weeks even as an Iraqi government-backed delegation held last ditch talks with leaders from the Sunni Muslim bastion to try to find a peaceful solution to the standoff.
Fallujah is in the heart of the restive Al-Anbar province, where the marines met their death in one of the highest single-day military casualty tolls since last year's US-led invasion.
"Eight Marines assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were killed in action and nine others were wounded in action today while conducting increased security operations in the Al-Anbar province," the military said in a statement.
For their part, the marines pounded the insurgent flashpoint of Fallujah with artillery shells after a unit came under mortar attack on the eastern fringe.
"This was the most consistent and heavy artillery fire in support of troops on the ground (in recent weeks)," said Lieutenant Lyle Gilbert.
Three hours later, a US warplane bombed a suspected rebel mortar site in the south of Fallujah. It failed to destroy the site completely so a plane returned to rake the area with machine-gun rounds, he said.
Since October 14, US troops have encircled Fallujah, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad, where the military has repeatedly launched air strikes and some limited ground incursions.
There has been increased talk of an imminent two-pronged US-led assault on insurgents in Fallujah and Ramadi, further west, where the US military is doubling its troop strength to 2,000.
Amid the maneouvering, an Iraqi government-backed delegation and leaders from Fallujah have been in contact since Wednesday, hoping to find a peaceful solution to the standoff, said Jawad al-Maliki, a member of Iraq's interim parliament.
Previous discussions between the government and delegates from the Sunni Muslim hotspot collapsed in mid-October after Allawi threatened Fallujah with invasion if it did not surrender Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and other suspected Al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Meanwhile, seven people were killed and 19 wounded when a car bomb exploded outside the Baghdad offices of Al-Arabiya television, gouging a hole in the front of the building and sending thick plumes of black smoke into the air.
A group calling itself "Thawrat al-Ishrin (Revolution of the 1920s) Brigades" claimed responsibility for what it called an attack on "the infidels' television," in a statement posted on an Islamist website, whose authenticity could not be confirmed.
The station's Baghdad bureau chief, Haidar al-Wattar, said in a statement that Al-Arabiya, which had lost three journalists by US fire, had now been "attacked by the other side," which was the price to pay for its "objectivity."
Adding to the chaos, police found the head and trunk of an Asian-looking man, in central Baghdad, which they speculated were the remains of a Japanese backpacker kidnapped in Iraq.
"A decapitated body was retrieved behind the al-Karma hospital, near to Haifa Street (a notorious area in the centre of the capital)," said colonel Adnan Abdul Rahman, a spokesman for the interior ministry.
Majid Hadi, a police officer who had been on the patrol that made the grisly discovery, told reporters at a forensic centre where the body parts were taken that the head and trunk had been wrapped up in the star spangled banner.
"We found the remains of the Japanese hostage near Haifa Street," Hadi said.
The news came after Japan was thrown into confusion over the fate of a 24-year-old hostage threatened with execution after another corpse was found in Iraq and flown out of the country before being ruled not to be that of the Shosei Koda.
Out-gunned militarily, militants use foreign hostages as weapons in a bid to crack the US-led coalition in Iraq and the interim Iraqi government.
A Sudanese working as an interpreter for a US company along with truck drivers from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Somalia are the latest in a long list of victims.
In further unrest, 15 Iraqis died and another 20 were wounded in an exchange of gunfire south of Baghdad, hospital sources said, while the US military reported killing five suspected rebels during clashes.
10/30/2004 - 21:35 GMT - AFP