BAGHDAD, 19 January 2006 — Ten Iraqi bodyguards and drivers were killed yesterday and two foreign telephone engineers were feared kidnapped, after gunmen ambushed a convoy in a Baghdad road tunnel.

The attack came as the kidnappers of US journalist Jill Carroll threatened to kill her if US forces did not free all female Iraqi prisoners within 72 hours, according to Arabic television station Al-Jazeera which Tuesday broadcast a video of the hostage.

Meanwhile, the sister of Interior Minister Bayan Baker Solagh, who was kidnapped on Jan. 3, a few days before Carroll, was freed, according to Iraqi state television.

Nine more Iraqis were killed in attacks nationwide yesterday, while the bodies of 11 policemen and soldiers were discovered in a makeshift grave.

Two foreign engineers were kidnapped in the ambush on the three-car convoy of the Iraqna mobile phone company, an Interior Ministry official said, adding that three drivers and seven bodyguards were killed.

Shamel Hanafi, chief commercial officer for Iraqna, told AFP the engineers were from Malawi and Madagascar. “We don’t know whether they were kidnapped, or whether they ran away or are hiding after the attack,” he said.

The government in Malawi, which has no diplomatic relations with Iraq, said it was investigating the report.

The convoy had been on its way to the western suburb of Abu Ghraib to repair a transmitter station when the attack occurred, officials at the hospital were told.

The apparent abduction came a few hours after Al-Jazeera television broadcast a 20-second soundless videotape showing Carroll, 28, looking tired and wearing a gray sweatshirt with her long brown hair loose.

She was seized on Jan. 7 from a western Baghdad street after attempting to meet with a prominent Sunni Arab politician. Her interpreter was shot dead.

Journalists at Al-Jazeera said the kidnappers identified themselves as members of a previously unknown armed group calling itself the “Brigades of Vengeance” and threatened to kill her.

“The kidnappers have set the US government a deadline of 72 hours to free Iraqi women prisoners,” it said.

US military forces said they were holding a total of eight female Iraqi detainees.

Carroll’s family issued a statement pleading for her release and described her as “an innocent journalist.”

More than 40 foreigners are currently being held in Iraq or have been reported missing since a wave of hostage-taking erupted in the war-torn country in 2004. A number of hostages, including Westerners, have been killed.

Carroll, who freelanced for the Christian Science Monitor, was the 31st media worker to have been kidnapped since the start of the war in 2003, according to Reporters without Borders.

The surge in kidnappings comes as the country remains in political deadlock following the December election, with the formation of the first permanent government since Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003 awaiting final, but uncertified, results expected to be released this weekend.

The official de-Baathification committee responsible for rooting out members of the former ruling party from public life said the new head of the tribunal trying deposed dictator Saddam Hussein should not serve in his new position because he is a former Baathist.

Sayeed Al-Hamashi is to preside next week over the trial after Rizgar Mohammed Amin resigned following criticism over his performance.

In other violence yesterday, Sunni tribal leader Mohammed Sadek Al-Batah from the restive Al-Anbar province was shot dead in a flat in western Baghdad along with a nephew and an associate.

In Saadiya, northeast of Baghdad near the Iranian border, a roadside bombing targeting a police patrol killed four policemen and a civilian.

The US Army reported finding the bodies of 11 men in police or army uniforms, in a makeshift grave near Attarmiyah, some 50 kilometers north of Baghdad.

All the victims were found bound and blindfolded, but there was no immediate word on when they were killed.