An ambush victim is comforted at a Baghdad hospital after an attack on a mobile-telephone convoy that resulted in the deaths of six security guards and three drivers in western Baghdad Wednesday.

Hadi Mizban / The Associated Press

Related articles:

Insurgents suspected in crash that killed 2 helicopter pilots Attacks in Iraq kill at least 9, plus police officer's 4 children

Trades/Construction
RANCHO RESORT
MAINTANANCE POSITION Sales and Marketing
Everready Glass
Sales Reps Finance and Accounting
Charles E. Gillman Company
Accounting Specialist Administrative & Professional
Tucson Urban League
CEO/President Mechanical
Komatsu Equipment Co
Resident Field Mechanic Administrative & Professional
Jorgensen Brooks Group
Counselor

BAGHDAD — Insurgents carried out two dramatic ambushes Wednesday, killing 11 people including two American civilians in a roadside bombing in Basra and an attack on an Iraqi convoy in Baghdad.

A U.S. soldier based in Baghdad died of non-combat-related wounds Tuesday, the military said.

Meanwhile, Iraqi officials expressed hope that American hostage Jill Carroll would eventually be released, and kidnappers freed the sister of Iraq's interior minister after holding her for two weeks.

The ambushes, in which gunmen also seized two Kenyan engineers, were part of a surge in violence that left scores of Iraqis dead across the country Wednesday.

In the most gruesome development, police said militants used this week's downing of a U.S. helicopter to carve out a killing field north of Baghdad, slaying more than 40 people on remote roads that Iraqis were forced to use after American troops cordoned off the crash zone.

Thirty people were dragged from their cars Wednesday at crude checkpoints erected on unpaved roads and shot dead execution-style in farming areas in Nibaei, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, said police Lt. Qahtan al-Hashmawi.

Since Monday's crash of a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter that killed its two pilots 25 miles north of Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi forces cordoned off a large section of the main road near Dujail, police said.

In the boldest attack, gunmen fired on a convoy of a mobile-telephone company, killing six security guards and three drivers in western Baghdad.

Naguib Sawiris, chairman of the Egyptian firm that controls the company, said the attackers seized the two Kenyans.

The two American civilians were killed in a roadside bombing in Basra. They worked for the Texas-based company DynCorp training Iraqi police. A third American was seriously wounded in the attack, the U.S. Embassy said.

The killings occurred as a joint American-Iraqi investigation was under way to find Carroll, the 28-year-old American journalist who was abducted Jan. 7 in Baghdad. Al-Jazeera television aired a video of the free-lance Christian Science Monitor reporter on Tuesday.

Al-Jazeera said the silent 20-second video included a threat to kill Carroll in 72 hours unless U.S. authorities release all female detainees in Iraq.