Baghdad, Iraq ? Bombs killed two British contractors in southern Iraq and seven people in the heart of the capital Saturday.

The two Britons, who worked for the security firm Control Risks Group, killed when a roadside bomb exploded alongside a British consulate convoy in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Two Iraqi children were wounded when a second device exploded five minutes later, police Capt. Mushtaq Kadim said.

Britain has some 8,500 troops in Iraq, mostly in the south. Its military headquarters is based in Basra, where Britain also has a consulate general’s office.

The bombing follows the kidnap-slayings of three Muslim diplomats – two from Algeria and one from Egypt – and the attempted kidnappings of a Pakistani and a Bahraini envoy this month. Those attacks were claimed by al-Qaida in Iraq, which is not believed active in heavily Shiite Basra.

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near the National Theater in the city’s Karradah district, killing seven people, including three policemen, police and witnesses said. Elsewhere in the city, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. convoy, hurling a Humvee off the highway.

In Ramadi, a suicide bomber attacked an American patrol, Iraqi police said.

No U.S. casualties were reported in either attack.

Also Saturday, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi official who heads a committee to determine which areas could be transferred from multinational control, listed seven Shiite and Kurdish cities that would be among the first to transfer from multinational to Iraqi control.

“There are some stable cities that we can ask the Multinational Forces for to leave, such as Najaf, Karbala, Samawah, Diwaniyah and maybe Nasiriyah, Sulaimaniyah and Irbil,” al-Rubaie said.

He did not announce a timetable.

Deaths in iraq

As of Saturday, at least 1,789 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

At least 1,382 died as a result of hostile action. The figures include five military civilians.