IRAQI security forces launched a high-profile crackdown targeting terrorists in Baghdad yesterday as insurgents hit back with suicide bombings and ambushes that killed at least 17 people.

Car bombers struck twice in rapid succession in the Iraqi capital today, killing at least 11 people including an American soldier and wounding at least 16.

The wife of British hostage Ken Bigley, who is being held in Iraq, made an emotional plea to his kidnappers for mercy today after two of his American colleagues were beheaded.

The militant group led by al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has posted a gruesome video on a website showing the decapitation of a man identified as American civil engineer Eugene Armstrong.

IRAQI insurgents blew up an oil pipeline and fired on gasoline storage tanks, as US troops searched for rebels and weapons in strongholds of captured dictator Saddam Hussein.

Pipelines and a petrol storage depot were attacked in three different parts of Iraq, setting fires that blazed for hours and lost millions of gallons of oil, officials and media reports said today.

A suicide bomber's mother says she wished her son luck shortly before he killed an Israeli toddler and her grandmother.

A Briton has been arrested in Jerusalem on suspicion of having been sent by a Lebanese guerrilla group to carry out a terrorist attack, officials in Israel said yesterday.