President George W. Bush pledged US troops would stay on in Iraq.

And the Iraqi court tasked with trying ousted leader Saddam Hussein and his aides on Wednesday released recent video footage of associates of the former dictator being interrogated.

At least 12 Iraqis died and 19 were wounded Wednesday, including four who were killed when mortar rounds slammed into their homes in the northwestern town of Tal Afar while they slept.

But a Turkish businessman held by militants in Iraq since January was freed, a senior Turkish diplomat said.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, at a meeting in Yemen, called on Islamic states to show greater understanding of the horror of the violence rocking his country and to take an unambiguous stance in the war on insurgents.

In footage taken Sunday, two cousins of Saddam, former governors of Babylon and Missan provinces, were shown, while Tareq Aziz, the well-known deputy prime minister in Saddam's regime, was also shown.

Aziz, who was one of Saddam's best-known faces abroad, said that Saddam had personally ordered the suppression of the Shiite uprising in 1991 without reference to top aides.

US troops, meanwhile, staged a dawn raid west of Baghdad, detaining a Sunni tribal leader close to hardline clerics, but later released him.

North of Baghdad, the coffins of Iraq's oldest member of parliament, Dhari al-Fayadh, 87, and his son Hassan were paraded through the streets of their hometown by a packed crowd that beat their breasts and waved guns in the air.

The Al-Qaeda-linked group headed by Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing that killed them Tuesday, in an Internet statement whose authenticity could not be verified.

Such attacks prompted the US State Department Wednesday to reissue a strong warning against travel to Iraq, highlighting the dangers of using roads or civilian aircraft in the insurgency-wracked country.