BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen abducted a Lebanese-American contractor who worked with the U.S. Army from his Baghdad home, Iraqi officials said today, while four Jordanian truck drivers were seized by assailants in a separate kidnapping.

Radim Sadeq, a Lebanese-American contractor with a mobile phone company, was snatched by gunmen when he answered the door of his home in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood overnight, Lt. Col. Maan Khalaf said.

It was the second abduction this week in upscale Mansour, where many foreign companies are based. On Monday, gunmen stormed the two-story compound of a Saudi company, abducting six people, including an American, a Nepalese, a Filipino and three Iraqis, after a bloody gunbattle that left an Iraqi guard and one of the attackers dead.

Also today, a car bomb exploded near a bus carrying airport employees to work in Baghdad, injuring nine people.

Gunmen also killed an Oil Ministry official, Hussein Ali al-Fattal, in a driveby shooting as he was on his way to work, the ministry said.

In Jordan, officials said today that four Jordanian drivers have been kidnapped in Iraq and two others were shot at by unknown assailants.

Jordanian spokeswoman Asma Khader declined to provide details on the abducted Jordanians but said her government has taken up the matter with visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

She said the two other Jordanians came under fire in the Ramadi area in central Iraq - a Muslim Sunni militant stronghold.

More than 160 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April last year. Some kidnapping groups seek ransom, while others pursue political motives such as the withdrawal of foreign companies and troops from Iraq. Kidnappers have killed about 30 hostages.

Meanwhile, the kidnappers of aid worker Margaret Hassan are threatening to hand her over to al-Qaida-linked militants notorious for beheading hostages unless Britain agrees within 48 hours to pull its troops from Iraq, an Arabic television station reports.

The threat to Hassan, the Iraq director for CARE International, was made in a videotape received by Al-Jazeera television but not broadcast in its entirety because the station said it was "too graphic."

Instead, it transmitted a segment Tuesday night showing a hooded gunman but without sound. The newscaster said the kidnappers gave Britain 48 hours to meet their demands, "primarily the withdrawal" of British troops.

Otherwise, the 59-year-old Hassan will be handed over to al-Qaida in Iraq, a group headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His followers have beheaded at least six hostages: three Americans, a Briton, a Japanese and a South Korean.

Meanwhile, there has been no word on an American and two other foreigners - one Filipino and a Nepalese - abducted Monday night in Baghdad.

In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair's office and the British Foreign Office both declined to comment on the reported demand. Britain has 8,500 troops in Iraq, the second-largest contingent after the United States.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told his parliament that the full tape showed the Dublin-born Hassan pleading for her life directly to the camera before suddenly fainting.

Ahern, who had not seen the video, said a bucket of water is then thrown over Hassan's head and she is filmed lying wet and helpless on the ground before getting up and crying.

Ahern described the text of the video as "distressing" and said "there were a number of very dangerous and very serious timescales stated."

Hassan, an Irish-British-Iraqi citizen who is married to an Iraqi, was kidnapped last month from her car in western Baghdad. No group has claimed responsibility for her kidnapping and there was no sign on the brief broadcast of any banner identifying who held her.

On Tuesday, insurgents blew up an oil pipeline and an oil well in northern Iraq in a pair of attacks that shut down oil exports from the north, probably for the next 10 days, Iraqi oil officials said.

A huge explosion rocked the compound of Ghabaza oil field, 22 miles southwest of Kirkuk, late Tuesday night. Earlier in the day, attackers blew up an oil pipeline in northern Iraq.

The latest violence came as American forces prepare for a major offensive against Fallujah and other Sunni militant strongholds north and west of Baghdad in hopes of curbing the insurgency so that elections can be held in January.

In the past 12 hours, Iraqi and U.S. forces have been conducting "coordinated offensive operations in and around the Fallujah-Ramadi area," the U.S. command said.