Give up foreign militants: Allawi tells Falluja

‘‘If Zarqawi and his group are not handed over to us, we are ready for major operations in Falluja,’’ Allawi told Iraq’s interim national council. ‘‘I hope they (people in Falluja) will respond. If they don’t, we will have to use force.’’

US troops called in air strikes on one Falluja district during fighting on Tuesday in which eight were killed.

Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad group cut the heads off two men it said were Iraqi intelligence officers and posted a video of their killings on the Internet.

The United States has offered $25 million for information leading to the capture or killing of the Jordanian, whose group beheaded two Americans and a Briton kidnapped last month.

Two other Westerners are still missing in Iraq —— French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot —— but the French government believes they are still alive. A kidnapped American photographer was released after a two day ordeal today. Paul Taggart, 24, a freelancer represented by the World Picture News agency, was taken captive on Sunday when a gang of gunmen stopped his car en route to Sadr City. Two Lebanese hostages were also released.

Meanwhile, CNN reported that the US unsuccessfully tried at least twice to rescue the two Americans and one British man beheaded last month.

US officials were quoted as saying that hostage rescue teams went to two places in Baghdad based on intelligence reports and found nothing.

In the latest violence, two US soldiers died when a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle next to a military convoy in the northern city of Mosul. Another bomb killed a US soldier in Baghdad before dawn on Wednesday and a similar attack killed three soldiers the night before, the military said.

UN nuclear inspectors, barred from most of Iraq since the invasion, said they were ready to return to probe the disappearance of equipment that could be used in atomic weapons.

The announcement came as Iraq urged international donors to live up to their promises on funding for reconstruction work on Wednesday even as the United Nations has granted the country its vote, saying it could not pay its dues due to reasons beyond its control.