Other developments in Iraq on Sunday

Protected by about 100 guards, Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi visited the war-shattered city of Najaf on Sunday, calling on Shiite militants to lay down their weapons.

Scattered attacks across the country killed at least 19 Iraqis and wounded dozens of others, including four U.S. soldiers.

Throughout the night, explosions, apparently from mortar barrages, rocked a downtown Baghdad neighborhood where foreign journalists and contractors stay.

The government reinstated the death penalty in its latest effort to beat down the 15-month-old insurgency -- marked by car bombings, sabotage, gunbattles and kidnappings -- that has destabilized the country and held back reconstruction efforts.

Militants said they had abducted Faridoun Jihani, the Iranian consul to the Iraqi city of Karbala. The kidnappers, who called themselves the "Islamic Army in Iraq," warned Iran not to interfere in Iraq's affairs, but did not threaten Jihani or make any demands, according to Al-Arabiya television.

Though a deadline for militants to withdraw from Najaf, the center of the worst violence, expired Saturday, masked gunmen still patrolled the streets of the old city.

The U.S. military said it had renewed an offensive against Mahdi Army militants who were using the city's massive cemetery as an operations base and weapons depot. Witnesses said the military attacked the cemetery with helicopter gunships.

In violence in other Shiite areas, a U.S. Army OH-58 observation helicopter made an emergency landing in Baghdad near the Sadr City neighborhood after being attacked.

As of Friday, 922 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to the Defense Department. Of those, 685 died as a result of hostile action and 237 died of nonhostile causes. The department did not provide an update over the weekend.

The British military has reported 61 deaths; Italy, 18; Spain, eight; Poland, seven; Bulgaria, six; Ukraine, four; Slovakia, three; Thailand, two; and Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and the Netherlands have reported one death each.

-- The Associated Press