IRAQ Fallujah fighting kills 13 people

Colin Powell made an unannounced trip to Baghdad.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Fighting between U.S. forces and Iraqi insurgents in the turbulent city of Fallujah killed some 13 people, officials said, while a kidnapped truck driver was given just hours to live unless the company for which he works pulls out of the country.
The hostage deadline loomed as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made an unannounced trip to Baghdad for meetings with top officials. Powell is on a weeklong tour of central Europe and the Middle East.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Bob Callahan said Powell would meet with President Ghazi al-Yawer and the deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh. Details of the talks weren't known, but it was likely they would discuss Iraqi authorities' decision Thursday to put off a national conference considered a crucial step on the road to democracy amid disarray over choosing delegates and boycott threats by key factions.
Worst attack since transfer
Thursday's announcement came a day after a car bombing killed 70 people, the worst single attack since U.S. officials transferred power to an interim Iraqi government.
Dr. Salim Ibrahim at Fallujah General Hospital said today he believed some 13 Iraqis were killed and 14 others wounded during fierce overnight fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. Ibrahim could not give an exact count of the dead, because many of their bodies had been torn up in bombings.
Witnesses reported hearing more than 60 mortar rounds fired toward the eastern edge of the city, where Americans are based, and planes flying overhead. U.S. Marines suffered no casualties.
The military said the fighting began when insurgents attacked a joint patrol of Marines and Iraqi troops with gunfire, mortars and rocket propelled grenades. The troops responded with gunfire, tank fire and aircraft bombing raids, which hit a building where the insurgents had fled to, the military reported.
Fallujah has been a focal point of resistance to the U.S. occupation. U.S. Marines pulled back from the city after besieging it for three weeks in April.
Iraq's interior minister said police in raids to crack down on insurgents have arrested 270 suspects, mostly from neighboring Arab countries. Some of the militants were Syrian and Iranian, Falah Hassan al-Naqib told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat daily.