Rebels hold 2 Iraqi cities

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Sunni guerrillas killed a U.S. Marine Thursday in the fourth day of the battle for Fallujah, Iraq, and militant Shiite militiamen held two southern cities. In an ominous new tactic, kidnappers seized foreign hostages, threatening to burn three Japanese captives alive if Tokyo did not withdraw troops.\nThe al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army militia had full control in the cities of Kut and Kufa in the central part of Najaf, Iraq. Police in the cities have abandoned their stations or stood aside as the gunmen roam the streets.\nThe newly invigorated, two-front insurgency has produced scenes of chaos and violence in Iraq not seen since U.S. forces captured Baghdad a year ago Friday. The turmoil further threatened shaky Iraqi security as the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority prepared to hand political sovereignty to a still-to-be-chosen Iraqi government June 30.\nL. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator of Iraq, warned Shiite pilgrims to beware of danger from more violence this weekend at the shrines, recalling the deadly bombings in Karbala, Iraq, and Baghdad that killed nearly 150 during celebrations last month.\nTelevision pictures broadcast in the Middle East by the Al-Jazeera satellite network and rebroadcast during prime-time in Japan showed the three Japanese hostages -- two aid workers and a journalist -- wide-eyed and moaning in terror as their black-clad captors held knives to their throats, shouting "God is Great" in Arabic.\nThe Japanese government called the abductions "unforgivable" but said they did not justify a Japanese withdrawal.\nTwo Arab aid workers from Jerusalem -- one who had once lived in Georgia -- were abducted in a separate incident.\nEight South Korean Christian missionaries were seized by gunmen outside Baghdad. Seven were freed after one of them escaped, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, said.\nMarines battled insurgents firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades in continued heavy fighting at two mosques in Fallujah. U.S. forces have surrounded the city 35 miles east of Baghdad but opened the blockade for a convoy carrying food and medicine sent to the beleaguered residents by Sunni clerics in Baghdad.\nThe U.S. military, meanwhile, reported the deaths of three 1st Infantry Division soldiers Wednesday and Thursday in attacks by Sunni insurgents -- though the circumstances and day of each death were not provided. The Army said a fourth soldier died from wounds received in an attack last week.\nThose deaths, along with the Marine killed Thursday in Fallujah, brought to 40 the number of American troops killed across Iraq this week. The fighting in Fallujah, nearby Ramadi and across the south has killed more than 460 Iraqis, including more than 280 in Fallujah, according to the director of the city's hospital, Rafie Al-Issawi.\nThe spiraling violence, which began Sunday, has raised questions about whether Iraqi police and security forces would confront the violence and whether U.S. allies would stay the course.\nIn Najaf, a policeman watched helplessly Thursday as a pickup truck carrying a dozen heavily armed Shiite militiamen went past his police station -- already in the militia's hands.\n"Look, how can we control such a situation?" he asked an Associated Press reporter.\nThere also were concerns about the largely passive Shiite majority and whether it would remain peaceful, shunning radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's attempts to enlist them in the fight he is leading to oust the Americans.\nStill, U.S. administrators insist they are making both political and military progress. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is in Iraq trying to establish a system to pick an interim Iraqi government. And Marine commanders said they were winning the fight for Fallujah.