Baghdad car bomb kills six
New tape of CARE hostage obtained by TV network
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 U.S. forces prepare for an assault on Falluja.
 At least eight U.S. Marines die west of Baghdad.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A car bomb near a government building in Baghdad killed at least six people on Tuesday and U.S. warplanes struck insurgent targets in Falluja overnight, authorities said.
Meanwhile, the Arab network Al-Jazeera confirmed Tuesday it has obtained another tape of hostage Margaret Hassan, the head of CARE International in Iraq who was kidnapped October 19.
On the tape, Hassan is seen alive and pleads for her life, the network said. Al-Jazeera chose not to air the tape, it said, because of graphic content.
The abductors have now threatened to turn her over to an al Qaeda-affiliated group already responsible for several beheadings, the network reports.
The threat would be carried out if the British government does not withdraw its troops from Iraq within 48 hours. (Full story)
Also, two representatives of a pro-government Shiite group -- abducted over the weekend -- have been killed, the government said.
In the car bombing in Baghdad, eight others were wounded, the interim Interior Ministry said. Police are investigating and could not provide other details about the incident, which took place near the Ministry of Education building, the ministry said.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, in the northern city of Mosul, a car bombing killed four Iraqi civilians and wounded 12 Iraqi national guard members, the U.S. military said.
The attack targeted an Iraqi security convoy, said U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Angela M. Bowman.
Meanwhile, U.S. and Iraqi forces continued efforts to pacify restive regions of the country amid the violence and the hostage-taking, and fighting insurgents in Falluja -- regarded as a base for the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi network -- remains a top priority.
In the latest Falluja strike, an Air Force jet "supporting a close air support mission for the 1st Marine Division of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force" demolished insurgent positions on the southeast side of Falluja, where attackers fired on multinational forces, said the Marines, in a news release.
Earlier, on Monday morning, a U.S. Air Force plane struck a target on the city's southeast side, destroying a weapons cache site, the U.S. military said in a news release.
U.S. warplanes have launched regular strikes in Falluja, regarded as a stronghold for the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi terror network, and U.S. and Iraqi forces have been preparing for an all-out assault on the city -- 30 miles west of Baghdad -- if talks between city leaders and government officials fail.
A few days ago, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi warned that he was getting closer to authorizing military action, saying the "the window of such peaceful settlement is closing" for the insurgents.
Abductions and the killing of captives continues in Iraq.
The Interior Ministry Tuesday identified the two representatives of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq who were abducted Sunday and killed Monday as Ahmed Juan and Kadhim Radhi Al-Oboudi.
Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman, the Interior Ministry spokesman, told CNN that the two SCIRI representatives had been working in the Al-Alam district of the capital.
SCIRI -- which is a Shiite political movement -- is a supporter of the interim government and has close ties to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq, and sources from the group blame the incident on terrorists.
In the latest kidnapping in Iraq, insurgents abducted four Iraqis, an American and a Nepalese late Monday after a gunbattle near their office in Baghdad's Al-Mansour district.
Rahman said said the six worked for a Saudi automotive service company, SASCO. U.S. Embassy spokesman Bob Callahan said one of the kidnappers and a bodyguard were killed in a gunbattle during the kidnapping.
Other developments
For the first time since the U.S.-led Iraq war began in March of 2003, a female British soldier has died in Iraq, the Ministry of Defense said Tuesday. Staff Sgt. Denise Michelle Rose of the Royal Military Police's Special Investigation Branch "was found dead from a gunshot wound at the Army base in the Shatt-al-Arab Hotel" in Basra, Iraq, on Sunday. The Defense Ministry said Rose's death is "not thought to have been the result of hostile action." Her death brings the number of British military fatalities the war to 70, according to the ministry. (Full story)A group claiming to be linked to al-Zarqawi on Tuesday issued a claim of responsibility on a Web site for the recent killing of a Japanese hostage. The Web site also posted a video showing his beheading by masked men. The body of Shosei Koda was found this weekend in a Baghdad neighborhood, wrapped in an American flag, with his head resting on top, a Japanese government source said.A U.S. Marine was killed and four others wounded by a roadside bomb Sunday in Ramadi, the capital of western Iraq's sprawling Al-Anbar province, the military reported Monday. The city has been an insurgent stronghold in the restive Sunni Triangle region. The latest American fatality brings the total U.S. death toll since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq to 1,121.On Monday, a representative of the Arab-language TV network Al-Arabiya said that five of its Iraqi employees were killed in a car bombing outside its offices over the weekend. The Dubai-based network said Saturday it received an official statement from a little-known Iraqi militant group, the Twentieth Brigades, denying reports that it attacked the office. But earlier, an Islamist Web site published a statement in which the group allegedly took responsibility for Saturday's attack. CNN producers Kevin Flower and Kianne Sadeq contributed to this report
