U.S. forces target militants in Falluja
Four Marines, 1 soldier killed in separate incidents
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 English city calls for mercy for hostage.
 U.S. warplanes and tanks target insurgents in Falluja.
 For U.S. troops, strategy is simple: do their job, stay alive.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A pair of U.S. and coalition airstrikes targeted suspected militants Saturday in the restive city of Falluja, according to military officials.
Sources in local hospitals said the attacks killed at least 14 people and injured a number of civilians, but U.S. forces said they have received no reports of civilian casualties and that the strikes were aimed at Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror network.
The U.S. military considers Falluja the center of Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi's terrorist network.
In an airstrike at about 10 p.m. local time, seven people were killed and 10 injured, hospital officials said.
"Intelligence sources indicated that approximately 10 terrorists were meeting at this location to plan operations targeting innocent Iraqi civilians and multinational forces," a coalition spokesman said.
In the earlier strike, officials in Falluja counted at least seven dead and 12 wounded Iraqis taken to hospitals, with reports of civilian casualties, including women and children.
Warplanes targeted "a known terrorist meeting site," the U.S. military said of the first strike.
Elsewhere, at least nine Iraqis and five U.S. troops have died in two days of fighting and attacks by insurgents, the U.S. and Iraqi military said Saturday.
Four Marines from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were killed Friday in three incidents while "conducting security and stability operations," in Anbar province, which includes Falluja, the U.S. military said Saturday.
Also, a homemade bomb killed a U.S. soldier in the capital Saturday.
Also on Saturday, insurgents attacked a van carrying new Iraqi national guard recruits in western Baghdad. Seven recruits were killed, and four recruits and an unknown number of civilians were wounded.
Witnesses said the attackers threw two hand grenades at the van and then shot at it with small arms.
Police reported that an officer with the Iraqi Central Intelligence Service was assassinated Friday after gunmen ambushed the officer's car in western Baghdad.
Police said that before leaving the scene, the gunmen spray-painted a message on their target's car: "This is the fate of the traitors."
North of the capital, gunmen killed an Iraqi police captain Saturday morning as he waited at a taxi stand in the suburb of Sada near Baquba.
With violence hitting so many parts of Iraq, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has pleaded with other countries to help Iraq both militarily and financially.
Wave of abductions
In the third in a series of kidnappings of foreigners in Iraq this month, gunmen seized six Egyptian telecommunication workers Friday, Iraqi officials said. (Full story)
Meanwhile Saturday, a delegation of Muslim clerics from Britain was due to arrive in Iraq to make direct pleas to the kidnappers to free Kenneth Bigley, a 62-year-old British engineer kidnapped nine days ago.
Bigley and two Americans were abducted September 16 from their residence in Baghdad. The three men were in Iraq working on reconstruction projects.
The two Americans were beheaded Monday and Tuesday. (Full story)
Bigley's captors said he will face the same fate unless the British government meets their demand to release Muslim women from Iraqi prisons.
An Islamist Web site posted claims that Bigley had been killed, but the claims could not be verified and were discredited by British authorities. (Full story)
Allawi seeks support
Addressing the U.N. General Assembly in a largely empty room Friday, Allawi said terrorists were seeking to "destroy the aspirations of our people and to destroy the physical infrastructure of Iraq and to stop the economic life in Iraq and to create a state of tension, panic, instability." (Full story)
The latest fighting comes just days after U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested that parts of Iraq might be excluded from elections set for January because they could be too dangerous for polling. (Full story)
However, on Friday, The Associated Press reported that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage appeared to contradict Rumsfeld, saying elections planned for January in Iraq must be "open to all citizens." (Full story)
Rumsfeld met with Allawi on Friday to talk about security.
Trying to put an upbeat face on the future of his young government Allawi has repeatedly vowed that the violence endured by Iraq will not deter the balloting.
He said that if elections were held today, they could be staged effectively in 15 of the country's 18 provinces, and cited South Africa, Sierra Leone and Indonesia as nations where elections were held despite violence.
"Today we are better off, you are better off, the world is better off without Saddam Hussein," Allawi said in his address to Congress on Thursday. (Transcript of Allawi's address)
Other developments
A U.S. soldier was sentenced to 25 years confinement for the murder of an Iraqi national guard soldier in May, coalition military officials said in a news release Saturday. Spc. Federico Merida pleaded guilty and was also given a dishonorable discharge and a reduction in rank.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
