Five Ukrainians and three Russians were freed yesterday, a day after they were seized in Iraq, where a US military crackdown has led to the kidnapping of dozens of foreigners and a flareup of violence.
A US soldier was killed and, near the hotspot of Fallujah, witnesses said a US helicopter crashed.
Interfax news agency said that Russia's biggest contractor in Iraq was evacuating all its 370 staff after the kidnapping of the eight employees from another engineering firm.
Witnesses said the eight returned to the villa from where gunmen had taken them after they came home from work on Monday.
"The eight hostages have been freed and are now at home," Interenergoservis general director Alexander Abramov told Interfax. There was no immediate word on the identity of the kidnappers or what had led to their swift release.
Seven Chinese nationals seized separately near Fallujah were freed on Monday. Three Czech journalists were reported missing.
The fate of three Japanese hostages whose captors threatened on Thursday to kill them unless Tokyo withdrew its troops from Iraq remained unclear.
Civilians nabbed
The past week's kidnaps have lent a new dimension to the Iraq conflict, snaring civilians from a dozen countries, some of which, like Russia, opposed the war that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Fighting erupted in al-Karma, near Fallujah, and a photographer at the scene said he saw clouds of smoke after US helicopters fired missiles at targets in the Sunni town.
Residents said earlier a shaky truce was holding in the battered city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, the scene of fierce fighting last week between US Marines and Sunni insurgents.
A US Apache helicopter crashed near the town yesterday, witnesses said, adding that it had been hit by ground fire during heavy fighting. The US military said it had no immediate information on the helicopter or the two crew.
The US army said a bomb attack on a convoy killed a US soldier yesterday and wounded another soldier and a civilian contractor. The convoy, traveling from Baquba to Najaf, was hit just after midnight by a roadside bomb planted south of Baghdad.
In a move likely to anger Shiite rebels, US troops detained an aide to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in a Baghdad hotel and took him away in an armored vehicle, witnesses said.
Hazem al-Araji, a cleric and aide to Sadr in a northern Baghdad district, was seized as he was leaving the Palestine Hotel after being interviewed by Italian journalists.
US forces, struggling for months to crush Sunni insurgents in central Iraq, now face a revolt led by Sadr in the south.
Sadr, who has his own Mehdi Army militia, is widely believed to be in Najaf, a holy city for Iraq's Shiite majority.
`Green zone'
Three mortar rounds crashed into central Baghdad, killing an Iraqi as smoke coiled from the US-led administration's heavily defended compound beside the Tigris river, witnesses said.
One bomb landed in a busy street, killing a driver. Another sent smoke rising from the US "Green Zone" compound, but a military spokesman had no word on casualties there. A third round hit a parking lot by the Tigris.
The attack jangled nerves in a city already shaken by Iraq's bloodiest days since the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago.
Ahmed al-Ani, an official at Fallujah's main hospital, said more than 625 people had died in the fighting there, including about 20 killed in the past three days of sporadic gunfire.
The Marines attacked rebels in Fallujah last week in response to the murder and mutilation of four American private security guards ambushed in the town on March 31.
An Iraqi mediator said more talks would take place to shore up an informal ceasefire that began on Sunday.
The Russians and Ukrainians freed yesterday were kidnapped by about 20 gunmen who raided the villa where they lived, a Baghdad reporter for Russia's 1st Channel television said.
Call for reinforcements
Faced with spreading violence in Iraq, General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in the region, said he wanted two more brigades to join the 145,000 US-led troops already there.
US President George W. Bush said the drive to crush "lawlessness and gangs" was vital for a planned handover of power to Iraqis on June 30 and a transition to democracy.
Bush, seeking re-election in November, was to discuss the crisis at his first formal news conference of the year later yesterday.
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