BAGHDAD, Iraq - Fierce battles between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces killed at least nine people today in Baqouba - the latest in a wave of clashes that has swept Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland even as American forces move against the last remaining pockets of resistance in Fallujah.

A Red Cross spokesman said a relief convoy of ambulances and supplies trying to enter Fallujah was turned back by Iraqi authorities or U.S. Marines today. The Red Crescent and Red Cross have been unable to gain access to people inside Fallujah during more than a week of fighting.

Elsewhere, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's office confirmed that two of his female relatives who were kidnapped last week have been released. Allawi's cousin, Ghazi Allawi, 75, his cousin's wife and his cousin's pregnant daughter-in-law were abducted at gunpoint last Tuesday in western Baghdad's Yarmouk neighborhood.

"Yes, yes, the two women were released yesterday," said an Allawi spokesman who declined to be named. There was no word on the cousin, Ghazi Allawi.

On Sunday, U.S. Marines found the mutilated body of a Western woman as they searched for militants still holding out in Fallujah. The woman has not yet been identified, but a British aide worker and a Pole are the only Western women known to have been taken hostage.

In Baqouba, U.S. officials said the trouble started when insurgents attacked 1st Infantry Division soldiers with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire near a traffic circle and police station.

During the fighting, U.S. troops started getting fire from a mosque, the U.S. military said. Iraqi security stormed the mosque and found rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and other weapons and ammunition, the statement said.

The fighting took place in Baqouba and the neighboring town of Buhriz, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. American aircraft dropped two 500-pound bombs on an insurgent position.

Four 1st Infantry Division soldiers were wounded, although two of them returned to duty, the military said. Nine Iraqis, including one attacker, a policeman and seven civilians, were killed and 11 Iraqis were injured in the fighting, according to Mohammed Zayad of the Baqouba hospital.

The week-old offensive in Fallujah, the city that came to symbolize resistance to the U.S.-led occupation, has left at least 38 American troops and six Iraqi soldiers dead. The number of U.S. troops wounded is now 275, though more than 60 have returned to duty. U.S. officials estimated more than 1,200 insurgents have been killed.

U.S. forces today resumed heavy airstrikes and artillery fire, with warplanes making between 20 and 30 bombing sorties in Fallujah and surrounding areas. U.S. ground forces were trying to corner the remaining resistance in the city.

American forces attacked a bunker complex Sunday in the city's south, where they discovered a network of steel-reinforced tunnels and underground bunkers. The tunnels connected a ring of facilities filled with weapons, an anti-aircraft artillery gun, bunk beds and a truck, according to a statement from the U.S. military.

Marines also found the disemboweled body of a Western woman wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket on a street in Fallujah. Two foreign women -Margaret Hassan, 59, director of CARE international in Iraq, and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq - were abducted last month, but the body could not be identified without further tests.

Civilians seeking medical care were told through loudspeakers and leaflets to contact U.S. troops. In Geneva, the Baghdad spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Ahmed Rawi, said today an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy of four ambulances and four trucks carrying supplies reached Fallujah General Hospital on the city's outskirts, but was unable to go further.

The hospital itself was well supplied because no patients or wounded people have been able to reach it from the embattled city, Rawi said.

"Regretfully, there was no patient in sight," he said.

In Baghdad, the Iraqi Red Crescent, the partner organization of the Red Cross, said U.S. forces and the Iraqi government prevented the aid convoy from crossing the Euphrates River into the main part of the city and told it to leave the hospital area as well.

Rawi told The Associated Press by telephone that no reason was given for the refusal, but that the convoy then went to the south in hopes of entering nearby Amiriyah al-Fallujah, where there are camps for displaced residents who have fled the fighting.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the Marine general who designed the ground attack on Fallujah said it had gone far more quickly than expected and that troops had fought their way across the city in just six days.

Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski on Sunday described the ground war as a "flawless execution of the plan we drew up. We are actually ahead of schedule."

As fighting in Fallujah neared its conclusion, insurgent attacks escalated elsewhere in Sunni Muslim areas of Iraq.

Clashes between gunmen and Iraqi security forces early today south of Baghdad killed seven Iraqi police and national guardsmen and injured five others, police said.

Gunmen carried out near-simultaneous attacks on a police station and an Iraqi National Guard headquarters in Suwayrah, about 25 miles south of Baghdad, police said. Two policemen and five National Guardsmen were killed.

The dead included Maj. Hadi Refeidi, the director of the Suwayrah police station.

Before the clashes, National Guardsmen opened fire at a boobytrapped car approaching their headquarters, killing the driver. The car was loaded with 880 pounds of TNT.

In the insurgent-heavy city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of the capital, heavy fighting erupted today between militants and U.S. forces, residents said.

Sunni clerics at several mosques called on residents to kick out bands of armed men who have come from outside the city, claiming that the clashes inside Ramada are having a negative impact on the economic situation of citizens.

North of Ramadi, a U.S. convoy came under attack near the town of Baghdadi, with one Humvee destroyed, according to a Baghdadi police Lt. Mohammed Abdel Karim. There was no confirmation from the U.S. military about the incident.

In Mosul, where an uprising broke out last week in support of the Fallujah defenders, militants raided two police stations Sunday, killing at least six Iraqi National Guards and wounding three others. One insurgent was killed and three others were wounded before Iraqi security forces regained control of both stations, witnesses said.

Insurgents also set fire to the governor's house, destroying it and damaging his car in northern Mosul. Governor Duraid Kashmoula also said the curfew will continue to be imposed on the city from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. in the morning.

A gunbattle erupted Sunday between militants and U.S. troops in the main market in the northern town of Beiji, killing at least six people and wounding 20 others, according to witnesses.