BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Hundreds of U.S. Marines and Iraqi soldiers have launched new raids against insurgent strongholds in a volatile Sunni province, and the head of Iraq's karate association became the latest victim of kidnapping, officials said yesterday.

A provincial official of the country's largest Shiite party also was wounded yesterday in an assassination attempt in Mosul, police said, and gunmen fired on the convoy of a provincial governor northeast of Baghdad.

Operation Scimitar started Thursday with raids in the village of Zaidan, 20 miles southeast of Fallujah, the military said. So far, 22 suspected insurgents had been detained.

Fallujah, a western Anbar province city 40 miles west of Baghdad, was a major insurgent bastion until U.S. forces overran the city in November.

The military said it did not announce the offensive earlier because commanders did not want to tip off insurgents. The campaign -- named after a curved Asian sword -- includes 500 Marines from the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, Regimental Combat Team-8, stationed in Okinawa, Japan, the military said.

The head of Iraq's karate association, meanwhile, was kidnapped south of Baghdad, sports officials said yesterday. Ali Shakir was abducted Thursday in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, said Ahmed Hashim, an Iraq Olympic committee official.

His abduction came two days after a Web site claimed that al-Qaida in Iraq had killed Egyptian envoy Ihab al-Sherif, who was seized by up to eight gunmen on a street in western Baghdad last weekend.

Sherif's abduction and attacks against Pakistani and Bahraini envoys have stunned the diplomatic community in Iraq and raised concerns about a possible exodus of diplomats, especially Arab delegations. Neighboring Jordan said it would not bow to fears,

Jordan will send its ambassador to Iraq "sooner rather than later," King Abdullah II said in a CNN interview aired yesterday. "We are not going to allow again these limited extremists that are trying to destabilize the future of Iraq to have any effect," he said.

Jordan has previously said it will return its ambassador to Baghdad, but Abdullah's confirmation was Amman's first since Sherif's disappearance.

Egyptian and Iraqi officials said Egypt would temporarily close its mission in Iraq and recall its staff -- although Sherif's body has not been found and the Web statement contained no photographic evidence of his death.

Pakistan's Ambassador Mohammed Younis Khan left the country Wednesday after his convoy was fired on in a kidnap attempt. Bahrain's top envoy, Hassan Malallah al-Ansari, was expected to leave soon after he was slightly wounded in a separate attempt.