Kidnappers holding four Westerners made no contact with Iraqi authorities today, the day which they had set as a deadline to kill the humanitarian activists unless US and Iraqi authorities release all prisoners they hold in Iraq, the interior ministry said.

A US citizen has been reported missing in Iraq, a US Embassy spokeswoman said today, after four humanitarian workers including a Briton were reported kidnapped.

AMERICAN and Iraqi troops launched a dawn assault yesterday on another town near the Syrian border and killed 50 insurgents, a US statement said, while the Interior Ministry reported that a car bomb detonated outside a gate leading into the fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad, killing two South Africans.