IRAQ: Iraq's interim prime minister, Mr Iyad Allawi, has threatened military action unless the rebels in Falluja hand over foreign militants led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is said to be based there.
Al-Zarqawi and his gang have kidnapped and murdered, usually by beheading, several foreign Iraqi-based workers as well as Iraqis.
They include the British engineer, Kenneth Bigley.
Yesterday, al-Zarqawi's group beheaded two Iraqi intelligence officers and posted a video of the killings on the internet.
The video from the Tahwid and Jihad Group showed a close-up of the two men's identification cards which said they were Iraqi intelligence officers.
Militants later cut off the two men's heads.
The two men said in the video they were captured on September 28th in Baghdad's Haifa street, a militant stronghold, while trying to remove the body of a slain female colleague, Nadia Abdulwahhab Matlak.
Mr Allawi appeared yesterday to have lost patience. "If Zarqawi and his group are not handed over to us, we are ready for major operations in Falluja," he told Iraq's interim national council.
Iraq hopes to assume total responsibility for protecting its oil infrastructure by December.
A new unit of the newly re-established paramilitary Border Police deployed around a pipeline in southern Iraq on Wednesday will take over.
Maj Gen Ahmad al-Khafaji said: "The border police and other security units will act as a rapid reaction force ready to fill in gaps in security upon the request of the oil ministry."