Iraq

Insurgents kill Italian hostage as Fallujah boils

Iraqi militants executed one of four Italian hostages, officials in Rome confirmed Wednesday - the first known execution of any of the foreigners kidnapped in Iraq.

The captors issued demands including the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and threatened to kill the three others, according to the Arab TV network al-Jazeera, which said it received a videotape of the murder but did not broadcast it because it is too graphic.

In Fallujah, U.S. warplanes strafed gunmen and more than 100 guerrillas with rocket-propelled grenades pounded a lone Marine armored vehicle lost in the streets - a sign of heavy battles ahead if Marines resume a full assault on this besieged city.

With a truce crumbling and President Bush calling for a key U.N. role to keep the country's political transition moving amid the violence, a top U.N. envoy proposed an Iraqi caretaker government in a formula that abandons a U.S.-favored plan.

The killing of the Italian, a security guard, is the first known execution of a foreign hostage in Iraq and could further dissuade international aid workers, contractors and journalists, some of whom are already restricting their activities in the country. Earlier Wednesday, Russia announced it will evacuate its citizens.

The Italian ambassador to Qatar, where al-Jazeera is based, watched the video and confirmed the man killed was Fabrizio Quattrocchi, one of the kidnapped Italians, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said.

Frattini said the government would do "what is possible and impossible" to free the remaining three.

The militants' videotape was accompanied by a statement from a previously unknown group calling itself the Green Battalion, which threatened to "kill the three remaining Italian hostages one after the other, if their demands are not met," al-Jazeera said.

With 22 foreigners held captive and at least 87 U.S. troops killed halfway into April, the unprecedented violence has largely eclipsed the political process. Negotiations were being held on both fronts - at Fallujah in central Iraq and at Najaf in the south - but the U.S. military has warned it will launch new assaults if talks do not bear fruit.

In the south, the country's top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, persuaded radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to drop defiant negotiating demands, including a U.S. troop withdrawal from all Iraqi cities. An Iranian envoy was also getting involved in the mediation with Sadr, an aide to the cleric said.

Still, Sadr militiamen appeared to be preparing for a fight, moving into buildings and onto rooftops on Najaf's outskirts, said Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, head of the 2,500 U.S. troops amassed outside the city, ready to move in against Sadr.

The U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, said respected Iraqis should lead a caretaker government - with a prime minister, president and two vice presidents to run the country after the handover of power by the Americans on June 30 and until national elections in January. He did not say who would select them.

Under the Brahimi plan, the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council would be dissolved June 30, rather than expanded to form an assembly as called for in an earlier proposal U.S. administrators promoted.

However, the formula would also give Washington a way to dissolve the fractious and unpopular 25-member council.

The White House thanked Brahimi for his plan, but it wasn't clear whether U.S. officials would embrace it.

"We appreciated the United Nations' help in moving forward on our strategy to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people by June 30," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

Brahimi also criticized the U.S. military operation in Fallujah.

"Collective punishment is certainly unacceptable and the siege of the city is absolutely unacceptable," he said.

In Fallujah, Marines and insurgents were fortifying their positions. In abandoned homes a few blocks into the city, Marines punched bricks out of walls to make holes through which to fire, and knocked down walls between rooftop terraces to allow movement from house to house without descending to the street. They spread shards of glass across doorsteps to hear the boot of an approaching insurgent.

A 4-day-old truce was crumbling amid nightly battles in which gunmen in larger groups have been attacking U.S. troops with increasing sophistication. Wednesday night the fighting began again, with AC-130 gunships over the city battering targets below.

The top Marine commander in the Fallujah area suggested time for negotiations was running out before U.S. forces call off their halt in offensive operations.

"I don't forecast that this stalemate will go on for long," said Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division. "It's hard to have a cease-fire when they maneuver against us, they fire at us."

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