As Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi was locked in security talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London, at least three people were killed and two wounded after US marines again opened fire in the lawless insurgency bastion of Fallujah, medics said.
In smouldering violence, four people were killed when a mine they were trying to lay on a bridge exploded near the eastern Iraqi town of As Suwayrah, a Polish military spokesman said.
"Sunday morning, four people tried to lay a mine near As Suwayrah. These suspected terrorists died in the explosion of their bomb," Colonel Zdzislaw Gnatowski, a spokesman for the Polish high command, told AFP without providing further details.
An Iraqi soldier and civilian were killed when a suicide bomber blew up a car alongside a joint US patrol near Samarra, the US military said. Three Iraqi, along with three US soldiers were also wounded.
A child was killed in the city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, when a car bomb exploded, also wounding three adults, police said.
A senior Iraqi police officer was killed when US troops opened fire on his vehicle in the Sunni insurgent belt immediately south of the capital, police said on Sunday.
Major General Fadhel al-Bakri died late Saturday when he failed to stop at a US checkpoint, Captain Mohammed al-Janabi of Al-Musayyib police department told AFP.
The US military had no immediate comment.
Meanwhile, Iraq's hostage crisis spiralled out of control on Sunday while Britain and Iraq faced down a chilling ultimatum to execute a Briton and two Americans.
The meeting between Allawi and Blair came halfway through the expected expiry of the hostage deadline.
"Our governments are working closely on it," Blair told a press conference.
The Iraqi leader added: "We are trying our best working on the issue of hostages and hopefully we will achieve some good results."
Allawi pledged his government would stick to the timetable of holding elections next January despite the rocketing bloodshed and called on the United Nations to help make them a success.
"We are definitely going to stick to the timetable of the elections in January next year," Allawi said. "I call upon the United Nations to help us in providing whatever it takes in making the elections a success in Iraq."
In a videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera early Saturday, Zarqawi militants said their American and British captives would be executed within 48 hours unless their governments release Iraqi women from two prisons.
The US military has said only two Iraqi women, both of them high-security detainees believed to have been instrumental in ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes, were being held in the country.
Hensley's wife Patty made a plea for mercy and the trio's release in a prepared statement addressed to the kidnappers and broadcast on CNN television.
In the meantime, Jordanian civil servant Alaa Thabet Lazim, who had been held hostage in Iraq for a month, was freed in an Iraqi security force raid.
The 35-year-old Jordanian said he had been snatched in August after trying to visit relatives and accused his captors of maltreating him.
Separately, al-Qaeda linked militants claimed to have executed three Kurds taken hostage in Taji, north of Baghdad, in a statement posted on website.
The trio was "soldiers with the traitor Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)" from the town of Zakho on the Turkish-border. Their bodies were dumped on the side of a road, said the statement signed by the military wing of the Army of Ansar al-Sunna.