BAGHDAD, Iraq — British ground forces and U.S. military helicopters fought with gunmen today in southern Iraq where four American security contractors and their Austrian co-worker were abducted in a convoy hijacking.

The Austrian was found dead and one of the Americans was gravely wounded, an Iraqi police officer said. The three Americans who were among the five Crescent Security Group employees taken hostage remained missing. Nine Asian employees were released by the captors.

Capt. Tane Dunlop, a spokesman for British forces who were fighting gunmen in the area where the kidnapping took place, said the hijacking occurred at 1 p.m. Thursday in Safwan, an Iraqi city near the Kuwait border.

At dawn today, British ground forces and helicopters searched an area of Safwan for gunmen who had attacked coalition forces in the past few days when about 10 of them opened fire from farm buildings, Dunlop said. The British and U.S. forces returned fire, Dunlop said.

As violence in Iraq continued to spiral out of control, a crisis was brewing for Iraq's Shiite-led government.

The influential Association of Muslim Scholars called on Sunni politicians to quit Iraq's government and parliament, angered by the government's decision to issue an arrest warrant for the association's leader, Harith al-Dhari.

Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi, a spokesman for the association, said the arrest warrant was political cover for "the acts of the government's security agencies that kill dozens of Iraqis every day."

Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi also condemned the arrest warrant saying "it is destructive to the national reconciliation plan." In a statement, al-Hashimi urged the government to cancel the warrant immediately.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani issued the warrant on Thursday night, declaring on state television that al-Dhari was wanted for inciting terrorism and violence.