Iraq's tiny Christian community was in shock after apparently co-ordinated blasts before dawn on the second day of the holy month of Ramazan, which caused widespread damage but no casualties.
A bomb hit the church of Saint Joseph at about 4:00am followed by similar explosions over the next two hours outside four other churches. Flames engulfed the Roman Catholic Saint George's church in the central Baghdad district of Karrada, leaving its wood-built sanctuary charred.
"My family and I fled from the fire," said the church caretaker Nabil Jamil as he
wandered around the debris. "Thanks God, there were no wounded or dead."
Christians, who make up just three percent of the population in the Muslim majority country, were the victims of a similar attack at the start of August in which 10 people died and 50 were injured.
Liquor stores and night clubs, typically owned by Christians and disapproved of by hard-liners, have also been targeted.
The US military said three soldiers, a marine and a civilian translator were killed and one soldier wounded in two car bombings on Friday, one in the northern city of Mosul and another near the city of Qaim on Iraq's border with Syria.
Another soldier was injured on Saturday when a car bomb exploded next to a US tank in the restive western province of al-Anbar in a town between the rebel strongholds of Fallujah and Ramadi, a US marines spokesman said.
The deaths raise to 1,087 the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003, according to an official Pentagon tally. A favourite weapon in the insurgency, cars packed with explosives and detonated outside police stations, on US patrols and other symbolic targets have become a near daily occurrence.
In other violence, a mortar round struck the garden of a cardiac hospital in Baghdad, killing one medic and wounding nine other staff, said an official at the Ibn el-Bitar hospital.
Desperate to crush the rebellion ahead of nation-wide elections planned for January, more than 1,000 US and Iraqi troops surrounded the flashpoint city of Fallujah for a second straight day in the hunt for Zarqawi.
A US military spokesman refused to say if marines would enter the city, but said a bomb was dropped on a house there on Friday night - an almost nightly occurrence. There was no word on casualties.
Local cleric Sheikh Abdul Hamid Jadu indicated that a delegation from the city was ready to return to the bargaining table with the government, but conditioned this on a halt to US air strikes and the release of fellow negotiator Sheikh Khaled Hamoud.
Negotiations halted Thursday over what the delegation saw as provocative comments by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi that Fallujah must surrender Zarqawi or face invasion.
Zarqawi's Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group, which is allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, is accused of some of the deadliest car bombings and a string of kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq.
Separately, the US army was dealing with an apparent revolt by soldiers who refused to go on a mission they considered too dangerous. The army said it was investigating why 19 members of a company based at Tallil failed to appear for a fuel delivery mission on Wednesday.
The army denied that the soldiers had been arrested or detained.
And as controversy over the very reasons for war continued to dominate the US presidential election campaign, an opinion poll found that US military staff and their families believe the United States sent too few troops into Iraq and put too great a burden on inexperienced forces, even though they support George W. Bush's overall handling of Iraq.
In London, Britain denied that any decision had been taken to re-deploy British troops in the south of Iraq to Baghdad to free US troops for other operations.
"There is lots and lots of speculation: that's all it is, speculation," a defence ministry spokesman said. "We keep our contribution to various operations in Iraq under review all the time; that includes force levels, positions, individual operations.
British media have been reporting that the United States has asked for British troops to be sent north from Basra where they are stationed at present to relieve US forces in south Baghdad.
Underscoring the danger factor, an Iraqi Kurd working for the education ministry was shot dead in Mosul. Northeast of Baghdad three Iraqis from the same family were killed in a roadside bombing.
The media rights group Reporters Without Borders said an Iraqi press photographer working for a European agency was shot dead in Kirkuk. His death brings the total number of journalists and other media workers killed in Iraq since the beginning of the US-led invasion to 44, according to the group.
UN chief Kofi Annan meanwhile dismissed the notion that anti-war countries such as France and Russia might have been prepared to ease sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Iraq in return for bribes and oil contracts.
In an interview with British television channel ITV to be broadcast Sunday, Annan rejected as unrealistic the allegations made earlier this month in a US weapons report.