A gunman killed a South African security guard in a Baghdad today in an attack that underscored the risks facing foreigners in Iraq.
Kidnappers freed two Swiss nationals and a Palestinian, but several other foreign hostages remained missing.
The South African was shot in the head by a lone assailant in a shop in the Iraqi capital's Sunni Muslim Adhamiya district.
A shaky truce held in Falluja, west of Baghdad, but a US general warned Sunni insurgents in the battered city they had "days not weeks" to disarm or risk a renewed US offensive.
In the mainly Shi'ite southern city of Basra, families mourned their dead after suicide bombers killed 73 people, 17 of them children burned alive on their way to school.
Surging violence this month as US-led forces battle Sunni guerrillas and grapple with a Shi'ite uprising in the south has led to a spate of kidnapping and attacks on foreigners in Iraq.
The Swiss Foreign Ministry said two Swiss employees of a non-governmental organisation had gone missing on Tuesday in unexplained circumstances. A Swiss embassy official in Baghdad said they had been released unharmed in southern Iraq.
US company Research Triangle International said captors freed one of its employees, a Palestinian with an Israeli identity card who had been held since April 8th.
At least 26 foreign civilians and private security guards have been killed in violence in March and April, including an Italian killed by kidnappers. About 50 foreigners have been abducted this month. Most have been freed unharmed.
The death toll from the Basra blasts rose to 73 after five of the 99 wounded died overnight, hospital officials said.
Streets were quiet and most schools were closed after yesterday's co-ordinated bombings of police stations.
Among the victims were eight kindergarten children and nine pupils of the Amjad Intermediate School for Girls whose minibuses flamed into an inferno after one explosion.
The blasts at three police stations in Basra, and at the police academy in nearby Zubeir, a mainly Sunni town, were the bloodiest attacks in the British-controlled zone since the start of the US-led occupation a year ago.
US President George W. Bush has accused al-Qaeda of carrying out the bombings. A senior military official in Baghdad pointed the finger at Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with suspected links to al Qaeda who is accused by US officials of orchestrating suicide attacks to spark a Sunni-Shi'ite civil war in Iraq.
Hopes for the imminent release of three kidnapped Italian security guards dimmed as Italy's government denied media reports it had paid a ransom to have them freed. Kidnappers have said they will kill the Italian hostages unless Italy withdraws its 2,700 troops from Iraq.
Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic have decided to bring their troops home. But Poland said it was ready to keep its 2,500 soldiers in Iraq until Iraqis hold elections in January 2005, while Denmark said its 510 troops could expand their role.
The United States and Britain plan to return sovereignty to Iraq on June 30th, formally ending an occupation which began after Saddam Hussein's fall last April, but bloodshed has clouded the run-up to the transition to an interim government.
Since the start of the war in March last year, 511 US soldiers have been killed in combat, Pentagon figures show. More than 100 have been killed this month.