Baghdad, Iraq ? Militants released seven foreign hostages Wednesday after their employer paid $500,000 ransom.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said a U.S. airstrike late Wednesday hit a suspected safehouse used by followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Fallujah. Witnesses said 17 people, including three children, were killed and six wounded. U.S. forces have bombed numerous targets in the city, which is a center of Sunni Muslim insurgents.

Earlier in the day, gunmen fired at a convoy carrying Ahmad Chalabi, a prominent Iraqi politician and one-time U.S. ally, wounding two of his bodyguards just hours before he joined other officials for the swearing-in ceremony of Iraq’s new transitional assembly.

The first meeting of the National Council, which is to act as a watchdog body over the interim government and help shepherd Iraq toward January elections, was marred by a nearby mortar barrage that wounded one person, the U.S. military said.

Militants waging a violent 16-month-old insurgency have turned to kidnapping foreigners in recent months as part of their campaign to drive out coalition forces and contractors. Other groups have taken hostages in hopes of extorting ransom, sometimes masking their greed under a cloak of politics.

The group holding the seven truck drivers, which called itself The Holders of the Black Banners, had initially demanded that their employer stop working in Iraq, that Iraqi detainees be released and that compensation be paid to victims of fighting in Fallujah.

By last week, the group had dropped all other demands and said it just wanted a commitment from the company, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Co., to stop working here, which it soon received.

But after the seven men — one Egyptian, three Indians and three Kenyans — were let go and whisked out of the country, the company revealed the kidnappers had demanded $6 million to $7 million in ransom. In the end, a team of employees drove to an unspecified location where the drivers were held and paid $500,000 to secure their release, KGL chief executive officer Said Dashti said.

“They (the kidnappers) were not trying to make a political statement, they were purely extortionists,” he said.