The day also brought mounting tensions between the two Shiite Muslim political factions.
In the capital, the U.S. military reported that an American soldier was killed when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb while on patrol the day before. No other details were provided.
Bernard Planche was leaving for work at a water treatment facility when several men abducted the engineer outside the gates of his home, according to Iraqi officials. The French Embassy in Baghdad released a statement saying Planche lived without proper security and had not followed the embassy's advice, including the suggestion that he leave Iraq.
Five other Westerners have been abducted in the past 10 days. A German archeologist and four Christian aid workers - an American, a Briton and two Canadians - were kidnapped in two separate incidents late last month.
Stating their demands on the Internet, Swords of Righteousness, has vowed to kill the four peace activists unless all Iraqi detainees are freed. The kidnappers of the German woman and her Iraqi driver have demanded that Germany stops cooperating with the Iraqi government.
The wife of the British hostage has appeared on the Arabic-language television station Al-Jazeera, begging for the release of her 74-year-old husband, Norman Kember. Sunni political groups in Iraq also have called for the abducted Westerners to be freed.
On Monday, the Muslim Association of Britain, a group that includes members of the militant organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, joined the chorus with a statement calling for ''the immediate release of these four hostages and of all other Western civilians kidnapped in Iraq.''
Other politically motivated attacks threw fuel on an already bitter fight over who will govern the country for the next four years.
On Monday, attackers killed an election official in the city of Baqouba, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, according to Iraqi officials. In the southern city of Samawah, other gunmen ransacked the local campaign headquarters of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite candidate in the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.
