WAR IN IRAQ Soldier, driver killed in convoy

At least 646 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since March 2003.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Two U.S. soldiers were killed in Baghdad, one when insurgents attacked a convoy transporting fuel on the west side of the capital, the military said. An Iraqi driver in the convoy was also killed.
Also Friday, two American soldiers and a number of civilian contractors were missing after the convoy attack, Pentagon officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Twelve others were wounded in the assault, including an Iraqi civilian thought to have been nearby when the attack set off fires, officials said. It was not immediately clear if any of the wounded were U.S. troops.
"These were fuel trucks," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said at a Baghdad news conference. "When they were attacked by the enemy, they probably had a collateral effect on other vehicles on the road."
Three Marines were killed a day earlier in Al Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the military said Friday. It wasn't clear if they died in Fallujah, where Marines have been battling insurgents since Monday. Fallujah is a major city in the province.
In Friday's violence, gunmen carrying automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades struck a tanker truck in a convoy in Abu Ghraib on the main highway entering western Baghdad, killing a soldier. A huge cloud of black smoke was seen rising over the city from the scene of the attack.
The second soldier was killed in an attack using roadside bombs and small arms on Camp Cooke, a U.S. base in northern Baghdad, the military said.
At least 646 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
Ambushed civilians
Meanwhile, four Americans killed in Iraq last week while working for a private security company may have been lured into an ambush by people they thought were members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, company officials said.
The men, one of whom was an Ohio native, were working for Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater Security when their vehicle was hit by rocket-propelled grenades March 31 in Fallujah. Their bodies were mutilated and burned, and two were hung from the framework of a bridge.
Patrick Toohey, Blackwater's vice president for government relations, told The New York Times that the workers were led into an ambush by men they had thought were members of the defense corps.
Toohey said Iraqis had promised the Blackwater-led convoy safe passage through the city but instead suddenly blocked the road, preventing any escape from waiting gunmen.
"The truth is, we got led into this ambush," Toohey told the paper.