Security forces were hunting on Saturday for five Westerners kidnapped two days ago in Iraq, where British Prime Minister Tony Blair conceded the situation was a disaster.
Four US citizens and an Austrian, working as security guards for a Kuwaiti company, were kidnapped on Thursday while escorting a convoy near the southern town of Safwan, but Iraqi officials denied reports one had been killed and two freed.
The kidnapping, which came just two days after dozens were abducted from a Baghdad ministry building, many of whom remain missing, was yet another example of increased violence in Iraq.
Ten people were killed on Saturday, while police also found 23 corpses in Iraq, including 20 in Baghdad.
And the US military said 11 "terrorists" were killed in a number of raids across Iraq, including one in Baghdad's Sadr City.
Blair on Friday acknowledged that the situation in the country after the US and British invasion of March 2003 was a disaster.
In an interview on Al-Jazeera's newly launched English-language channel, Blair was challenged about what interviewer David Frost said had "so far been pretty much of a disaster".
"It has," Blair said, before adding quickly: "But you see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It's not difficult because of some accident in planning.
But a Downing Street spokesman said Blair had not used the word disaster.
"What he does is set out that the violence in Iraq is of course hugely regrettable, tragic and very difficult, but that this violence is a result of malicious external intervention, not some planning error three years ago."
Iraq is engulfed in a bitter sectarian conflict that has killed thousands of people since it broke out in February.
Apart from widespread killings, the country is facing rampant kidnappings of militias or of foreigners by groups such as al Qaeda or by criminal gangs for ransom.
Militiamen disguised as police officers seized the five Westerners as they guarded a convoy of trucks from Kuwait that were stopped at "what appeared to be a police checkpoint near Safwan", a senior US official told AFP on Friday.
On Saturday Ali al-Mussawi, chief of operations at Basra police head quarters, said that all the five were still held captive.
"We have not rescued anybody or nobody has been found killed as reported yesterday. All the five are still missing," he told AFP.
On Friday a Basra provincial official said two American hostages had been rescued in a police raid and that one was found dead.
"Iraqi police found the body of an American where they conducted a raid in which two other Americans were freed," the official said.
Their employer, the Kuwait-based Crescent Security Group, said it was unaware of the fate of the Westerners.
Also on Friday, a British security guard was killed and another wounded in a firefight with Iraqi police in the Al-Zubair district who stopped a separate convoy.
Baker said the Britons working for another private security company "got involved in the fight after an altercation with the police who they thought were militiamen attempting to hijack the convoy".
"They thought it was a similar kind of attack on their convoy as the one that had taken place the previous day near Safwan. There was some misunderstanding," he said.
Meanwhile, the Islamic Army in Iraq, one of the country's main extremist groups, called on its fighters to carry out attacks against the government for launching a probe into a leading cleric, according to an Internet statement posted on Saturday that could not be independently verified.
On Friday Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said that a criminal investigation had been opened into the activities of Harith Sulaiman al-Dhari.
Iraqi state television reported earlier that the government had ordered the arrest of Dhari for "inciting sectarian violence."
Dhari has been criticised after telling Al-Arabiya news channel that Sunnis in Iraq were being marginalised, and for his criticism of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The Islamic Army, which has carried out a number of attacks and kidnappings and murders of foreigners, urged all fighters to "close the door on the so-called national reconciliation", referring to Maliki's plan to end the deadly sectarian violence engulfing Iraq.
Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Gordon Brown was in Basra on Saturday to visit British troops and hold talks with local leaders, including Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, Baker said.