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Gunmen killed at least nine Iraqis and kidnapped a Malawian engineer on Wednesday in an elaborate ambush on a private security convoy in a busy Baghdad street, officials and witnesses said.

It was the second major insurgent attack in the capital in two days. Late on Tuesday, gunmen killed seven Iraqis involved in supplying food to the Iraqi army.

The Malawian engineer and a Madagascan colleague, both employees of the mobile telephone operator Iraqna, were traveling from home to their office early on Wednesday when the attackers struck, an Iraqna spokesman told Reuters.

The fate of the Madagascan was not immediately clear.

As their convoy of three or four vehicles drove along the main street in the Nafaq al-Shurta area, "a large number" of gunmen hiding in buildings opened fire as other attackers drove out of side streets, an Interior Ministry official said.

Residents earlier reported that fighters were in Nafaq al-Shurta -- which literally translates as "Police Tunnel."

Uday Farouq, a passer-by wounded in the leg, told Reuters from his hospital bed: "I was on my way to work when there was a lot of shooting. I was shot before I even could run. My uncle was also wounded. I didn't know what had happened."

A Reuters cameraman counted nine bodies in the hospital morgue.

The Interior Ministry official said 10 security guards had been killed in the ambush and up to three people kidnapped.

Two engineers missing

Iraqna, part of the Egyptian-owned Orascom Telecom group, said two of its engineers were missing.

"We have two engineers who are missing -- one from Malawi and one from Madagascar," Iraqna spokesman Shamil Hanafi told Reuters. "We still do not know what has happened to them," he said.

There have been a series of attacks on Iraqna employees in the past. Hanafi said eight had been kidnapped previously -- six Iraqis and two Egyptian engineers.

Mobile phones are vital in Iraq because the landline telephone network is… barely operational after years of neglect, sanctions and the U.S-led war in March 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein.

US officials said earlier this week that 7 million Iraqis now had mobile phones, which were banned under Saddam.

Insurgents have sabotaged efforts to repair Iraq's dilapidated infrastructure, blowing up power lines and killing or kidnapping engineers as part of a campaign against the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government.

US military officials have said they expect a surge in violence around the release of the final results of the December 15 parliamentary election, expected to be published on Friday.

Immediately after Wednesday's attack US and Iraqi forces sealed off the area. A Reuters cameraman at the scene said that as the troops began withdrawing he saw an explosion close to several US Humvee armored vehicles.

There were no immediate reports of injuries in what appeared to have been the detonation of an improvised explosive device.

(Chhinadaily.com via agencies January 19, 2006)