Iraqi forces kill 13 rebels near Baghdad

During the fighting, which lasted around an hour, US warplanes patrolled the skies and US artillery guns opened fire to suppress the insurgents’ mortar positions, Major Neal O’Brien of the US 1st Infantry Division said.

It was one of the first major battles between Iraq’s security forces and insurgents since the handover of sovereignty on June 28 to an Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, and by far the largest death toll. No Iraqi security forces or US troops were killed. Reuters television pictures showed buildings blackened by fire and pockmarked with bullet and artillery holes. Inside one house, a family wept over the open coffin of a dead man. Outside, a number of armed men, their faces wrapped in checked scarves and wearing white robes, fired weapons into the air and shouted ‘‘Down with Allawi, down with America’’.

The fighting came as Iraq’s months-long hostage crisis took another turn for the worse — two Pakistanis working for a Kuwait-based company were feared kidnapped after going missing.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office said the two, an engineer and a driver believed to be working for the Al-Tamimi Group, disappeared on Friday as they drove to Baghdad. Kausar Parveen, wife of Azad Khan, called for the early release of her 49-year-old husband as their eldest daughter cried for her father at their village in Bangoi, 90 km northeast of Islamabad.

‘‘I miss my father very much. I urge the Pakistani government and Iraqi people to help find my father,’’ said Nazia, 21, with tears rolling down her face. Over the past 15 months, nationals from nearly two dozen countries have been kidnapped in Iraq, sometimes by criminal gangs, but increasingly by militants seeking to put pressure on governments and foreign companies to pull out of the country.

In a step up in sophistication for militants, a senior Egyptian diplomat was seized as he left a Baghdad mosque on Friday. Most of those kidnapped so far have been drivers. Abductions have sharply increased since April, when several dozen people were seized in one month. Around 60 people have been taken hostage since then, officials say.

Although most have since been freed, at least six have been killed — four of them by beheading — and on at least two occasions the hostage-takers’ demands have been met, a move that may be fuelling the surge in abductions.

A group calling itself Al Qaeda’s arm in Europe said Italy and Australia, both strong allies of the US, must pull out of Iraq or face attacks. ‘‘Australian people, if your government refuses to withdraw … we will shake the ground beneath your feet … and columns of rigged cars will not stop,’’ declared a group calling itself Islamic Tawhid Group, the Al Qaeda organisation, Europe. ‘‘Italian people, we advise you accept our offer and if you refuse you will hear columns of rigged cars shaking your cities,’’ the group said in a statement posted on a website.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he was not familiar with the group but was taking the threat seriously. ‘‘It reminds us that we have to be absolutely determined in the face of the threats of terrorists to make sure that we don’t give in to those threats,’’ he told Australian television. —(Reuters)