NEAR MADAEN, April 17: Iraqi troops backed by US forces mounted fresh raids in a town south of Baghdad on Sunday but failed to find any of the Shia hostages reported to have been threatened with death by Sunni guerrillas.

A senior Shia official in Baghdad had said that up to 150 hostages, including women and children, were seized on Friday when rebels entered Madaen, situated in an area dubbed the “Triangle of Death” due to the frequency of guerrilla attacks.

But a police official, who also declined to be named, said there might be as few as three hostages and that the situation was part of a string of tit-for-tat, tribally related abductions.

“Three areas where we suspected there were terrorists were raided but no one was found. There are other areas we will attack soon,” interim National Security Minister of State Kassim Daoud told parliament.

Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi accused al Qaeda’s wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, of seizing hostages to try to provoke a Sunni-Shia civil war.

“Unfortunately, evil powers are trying to disturb the peace of our country, stop progress, destroy Iraq, keep killing innocent civilians and planning for the start of ethnic, sectarian and religious division,” Mr Allawi said in a statement.

On Saturday, state-run Iraqiya television said the gunmen had threatened to start killing the hostages in 24 hours, but there was no evidence on Sunday that hostages had been killed.

Distraught Iraqis who said they had relatives among those abducted gathered outside Madaen.

“Where are they? Where are they?” asked Zuhra Chaloub, holding up pictures of two sons she said were seized in Salman Pak, a Sunni rebel stronghold adjacent to Madaen.

People in Madaen, where shops closed in expectation of fighting, insisted there was no hostage crisis.

The hostage-taking and a resurgence of violence will step up pressure on Iraq’s new leaders to deliver on promises to improve security after the Jan 30 elections.

Some Iraqi officials say the inability of the new leaders to form a government more than 11 weeks after the elections might be encouraging insurgents by creating the impression of weakness and indecision.

“Everyone wants the government to accelerate efforts to put an end to these types of incidents,” said Jawaad al-Maliki, a member of the Da’awa Party.

A mortar attack on a US camp in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, killed three US soldiers and wounded seven on Saturday night, the US military said.

In the central town of Mukdadiya, gunmen killed Hussein Nadir, a Kurdish member of the local council, on Saturday night.

The US embassy said an American humanitarian worker was among three people killed in an earlier reported incident in which a suicide car bomber struck on the road to Baghdad airport on Saturday.

Leader caught: Iraq security forces have captured a senior insurgent leader related to Izzat Ibrahim, one of the most sought-after men in the country, the government said on Sunday.