FALLUJAH, Sept 25: US assaults and clashes claimed 19 people in Iraq on Saturday, including five US marines.

In the day's action, US warplanes pounded the Sunni insurgent enclave of Fallujah killing seven Iraqis in a raid on a suspected hideout of a militant group holding a British hostage, while another seven Iraqis died in a rebel attack near the capital.

The insurgent gunmen targeted a minibus carrying national guard recruits in the latest deadly attack against Iraq's fledgling security forces.

The US military revealed three marines had been killed in Al-Anbar province, which includes Fallujah, on Friday, as Iraq took centre-stage in an increasingly acrimonious presidential election campaign back home.

As the whereabouts of kidnapped British engineer Kenneth Bigley remained unknown, a delegation from the Muslim Council of Britain was dispatched to press for the 62-year-old's release by his Islamist captors.

"We are undertaking this mission with the hope that there is still a possibility that Mr Bigley is alive, and that there may be some hope that the hostage-takers are holding out for something," said delegation member Daoud Abdullah.

Bigley was seized from his Baghdad home earlier this month together with two US colleagues who have already been beheaded by the alleged Al Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

US forces continued their almost daily strikes against the Zarqawi's suspected refuge in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, killing seven Iraqis, including women and children, medics said.

The US military said the airforce "conducted a strike inflicting a blow to the Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi terrorist network by conducting a precision strike on a known terrorist meeting site in central Fallujah."-AFP