A shaky truce between US Marines and Sunni rebels held in Falluja today after further talks to calm Iraq's bloodiest fighting since the war.
Seven Chinese became the latest foreigners to be abducted. Three Japanese remained captive and as many as nine Americans were missing. Other hostages have been freed.
Mr Mohsen Abdel Hamid, a member of Iraq's Governing Council, said 12 hostages had been freed after the Association of Muslim Clerics issued an edict condemning hostage-taking. He did not give the nationalities of those he said had been released.
Despite overnight clashes in Falluja, Iraqi mediators said they had secured an extension to a truce that gave the battered town some respite at the weekend. Mohammed Qubaisi, of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said more talks were expected tomorrow.
A spokesman for the US military, which is taking no direct part in the talks, said he hoped the political track would succeed in restoring "legitimate Iraqi control" in Falluja.
Otherwise, Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt said, the Marines were ready to "complete the destruction of enemy forces" there.
Each side blames the other for breaking the informal truce. The Marines said they had come under fire all day yesterday and had killed a "significant number" of rebels.
A Marine helicopter had hit two guerrilla positions with rockets and missiles.
Denying that Iraq was in chaos, Brig Gen Kimmitt told a news conference that US-led forces had lost about 70 dead and killed about 10 times that number of rebels this month.
The coalition death toll compares to 89 troops killed in action in the three-week war that toppled Saddam Hussein. At least 474 US troops have died in combat since the war began.
Brig Gen Kimmitt had no word on civilian deaths in what has been Iraq's most violent period since the fall of Baghdad a year ago.
Mr Rafa Hayad al-Issawi, director of Falluja's main hospital, said he believed more than 600 Iraqis had been killed there.