Tikrit, Iraq ? Attackers ambushed a U.S. military patrol late Thursday, killing three American soldiers and wounding two on the outskirts of Saddam Hussein’s hometown. The assault near Tikrit came hours after insurgents ambushed two U.S. military convoys with remote-controlled bombs, opening a three-hour gunbattle in a volatile city 50 miles west of Baghdad.

The U.S. military said two soldiers were wounded in the Khaldiyah ambush, the latest in a string of attacks that has raised questions about the Bush administration’s handling of postwar Iraq.

The three soldiers from the Army’s 4th Infantry Division were killed when attackers opened fire with small arms in the village of Uja, just five miles south of the center of Tikrit, shortly before midnight Thursday, Lt. Col. William McDonald said. Uja was Saddam’s birthplace.

The two wounded soldiers were evacuated to a medical treatment facility and the names of those killed were withheld pending notification of next of kin, he said.

The soldiers were part of a patrol investigating a suspected site used to launch rocket propelled grenades, or RPG’s, at American military convoys. The weapons have been used to launch repeated attacks against the U.S. military in and around Tikrit.

“They were responding to a suspected RPG site when the incident occurred,” McDonald said.

Earlier Thursday, insurgents ambushed two U.S. military convoys with remote-controlled bombs and opened fire on one of them, unleashing a three-hour gunbattle in the city of Khaldiyah, about 50 miles west of Baghdad. The U.S. military said two soldiers were wounded.

Five U.S. tanks, two Bradley fighting vehicles and 40 troops surrounded the neighborhood from which gunmen opened fire after the first roadside bomb exploded.

A crowd of Iraqis hold up portraits of Saddam Hussein and pieces of burned U.S. military vehicles as they celebrate at a site where American troops were ambushed near Khaldiyah. U.S. vehicles were attacked in two separate incidents Thursday around the town of Khaldiyah, 100 kilometers west of Baghdad. The U.S. military in Baghdad said two American soldiers were wounded.