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4 U.S. Contractors Killed In Iraq

A roadside bomb exploded Wednesday near a passing convoy of American security guards in the southern city of Basra, killing four contractors, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said.

Three of the men were killed instantly and a fourth died after British troops took him to a military hospital, embassy spokesman Peter Mitchell said.

"All four individuals worked for a private security firm supporting the regional U.S. Embassy office in Basra," Mitchell said in a statement.

Initial reports had indicated that the target of the attack was a British diplomatic convoy, but officials in London said no British personnel were involved.

In other developments:

  • Coalition Forces rescued American hostage Roy Hallums and an Iraqi citizen on Wednesday from an isolated farm house south of Baghdad, a military statement said. "Hallums is in good condition and is receiving medical care," the military said.

    Hallums was held in a farmhouse 15 miles south of Baghdad, the statement said, adding that rescuers were tipped to his whereabouts by an Iraqi detainee. Hallums had been held since he was kidnapped at gunpoint from his office in the Mansour district of Baghdad on Nov. 1, 2004.

  • Iraq's president said Saddam Hussein has confessed to ordering killings and other crimes committed during his regime, including the massacre of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s. Jalal Talabani said the deposed leader "deserves to be executed 20 times a day." But a legal consultant retained by Saddam's family is skeptical of the alleged confession and said the news comes as a "big surprise." He said Saddam did not mention any confession when he met his lawyer Monday.
  • The deputy head of the Iraqi Constitution Committee said the new charter would be sent to the government printing house Thursday. He said it was unchanged from the version sent to parliament by the drafting committee Aug. 28 after several deadlines were missed.
  • In Baghdad, gunmen shot and killed a top Iraqi Defense Ministry official Wednesday as he drove through a dangerous neighborhood in the south of the capital. Separately, insurgents attacked an Interior Ministry commando patrol in the west of the city, killing a colonel and wounding four bodyguards.
  • Insurgents bombed a pipeline carrying oil from a field near Khanaqin on the Iranian border Wednesday, interrupting a source of crude to Baghdad's Dora refinery, police said. A fire was burning and the full extent of the damage was not immediately known. The explosion occurred at a village not far from Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
  • Iraqi officials said Tuesday that al Qaeda-linked foreign fighters had taken control of large areas of a strategic city on the Syrian border after weeks of fighting between an Iraqi tribe that supports the insurgents and one that opposes them. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said much of Qaim, 200 miles west of Baghdad, had been abandoned.
  • U.N. chief Kofi Annan said Tuesday that Iraq had become an even greater terrorist center than Afghanistan under the Taliban. Attacks attributed to al Qaeda's wing in Iraq have stepped up in the Baghdad area and western Iraq.

    In Basra, AP Television News videotape showed an overturned white SUV in a ravine next to a busy highway. Six British Army Land Rovers, together with Iraqi police cars and two civilian ambulances were parked nearby. British soldiers were seen loading a body from the SUV into a military ambulance.

    Southern Iraq, where some 8,500 British troops are deployed, has been mostly calm since U.S. and British forces occupied Iraq more than two years ago.

    However, there has been increasing violence there in the past two months.

    On July 16, a roadside bomb in Amarah killed three British soldiers and wounded two others. Two weeks later, two Britons, who worked for the security firm Control Risks Group, were killed when a roadside bomb exploded alongside a British diplomatic convoy in Basra.

    Two British soldiers died Monday in a roadside bombing west of Basra, bringing to 95 the number of fatalities British forces have suffered since the war began.

    Also Wednesday, Baha al-Araji, deputy head of the Constitution Committee, said a final version of the new charter was to be sent for printing Thursday.

    President Talabani, a Kurd, said the version to be printed did contain one revision from the version sent to parliament on Aug. 28 – a bow to an Arab League demand that the constitution acknowledge the country's role as a founder of the pan-Arab group. Before that revision, the document said Iraq was an Islamic country but omitted references to it's history as a key player in the Arab world.

    Vice President Ghazi Al-Yawar, a Sunni, said the new constitution did not meet the minority sect's demands "100 percent," but encouraged its adoption. The task now, he said, was for Sunnis to engage in upcoming parliamentary elections to boost their representation in the legislature for a future bid to amend the charter.

    The leaders spoke at a memorial for victims of the Aug. 31 bridge stampede in which more than 900 people died attempting to reach a Shiite mosque in northern Baghdad during a holy day pilgrimage.

    Iraqis will vote on the charter in an Oct. 15 referendum, with the outcome still not assured because of fundamental opposition from the country's Sunni minority, which governed under Saddam. Five million copies of the constitution are to be distributed around the country with monthly food rations.

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