Iraqi Employees on US Base Attacked

One of the wounded men, Raid Rizuqi, said he and his friends were driving to work on Thursday when fighters opened fire from another car.

Baquba’s general hospital confirmed they received one corpse riddled with bullets.

Meanwhile, in northern Iraq, a mortar attack on a US position fell short and killed two civilians and wounded six in Tal Afar, the US military said.

"The insurgent minority attempted to fire mortar rounds at the Tal Afar Castle, instead missing and killing and wounding innocent Iraqis," the military said in a statement.

Tal Afar, west of the northern city of Mosul, has been the scene of violence for months between US forces and anti-US fighters.

Marines killed

Separately, two US marines were killed in action in Iraq’s western province of al-Anbar, the US military said.

"A marine assigned to 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action yesterday (Wednesday) bringing to two the number of marines who died while conducting security and stability operations in the al-Anbar province," the military said in a statement on Thursday.

Al-Anbar is a huge, predominantly Sunni area which stretches westwards from the outskirts of Baghdad to the Saudi Arabian, Jordanian and Syrian borders, and includes the cities of Falluja and Ramadi.

The marines’ death raised the overall toll for US soldiers killed in Iraq to 1438 since the US-led invasion of March 2003, according to Pentagon figures.