Fighters hand over arms for cash

A Shi'ite militia disarmament plan that could end weeks of fighting in Baghdad got slowly under way yesterday as Iraq's interim government pursued peace talks with the rebel-held Sunni Muslim city of Falluja.

"I've given up my weapons, I'm with the interim government now," said Ahmed Hashem after handing over 22 rocket-propelled grenades. "We want peace and I won't fight the Americans."

Hashem got $1,100 for his arsenal under a plan that pays $50 for any AK-47, rocket-propelled grenade or mortar round.

The US-backed government aims to retake control of rebel-held areas throughout Iraq by political or military means ahead of national assembly elections due in January.

Mehdi Army fighters led by Moqtada al-Sadr began handing in weapons at the start of a five-day period in which they have agreed to disarm in the flashpoint Sadr City district.

Insecurity is rife even in Iraqi cities nominally under control of the security forces. A suicide car bomber attacked a US convoy in the northern city of Mosul, killing two civilians and wounding 18, hospital sources said.

"Initial reports indicate that there were civilian and military casualties," the US military said.

Mosul police said the bomb was placed in the back of a flat-bed truck and hidden under crates of fruit and vegetables. One of those killed was a municipal street cleaner. The beheaded bodies of two Iraqi residents of Mosul were found in the city, police said. There was no word on the motive for their killings.

Separately, a militant group said it had beheaded a Turkish contractor and his Iraqi translator for working with US forces in Iraq, al Jazeera television said, citing an Islamist website.