BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military said today it would release five Iraqi women detainees, a move demanded by the kidnappers of an American reporter to spare her life, but an official said the release was coincidental.

Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb blast south of Baghdad on Wednesday, while two Iraqi government employees were gunned down

today

in separate drive-by attacks in the northern city of Kirkuk.

Trade and Minerals Minister Osama Abdul-Aziz al-Najafi escaped a seventh assassination attempt today after a roadside bomb targeted his convoy north of Baghdad, but three bodyguards were killed and a fourth was seriously wounded, ministry spokeswoman Hanan Jassim said.

The Shiite bloc set to dominate the next parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance, will decide on its nominee for prime minister in the next few days, said a top Shiite official, Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi.

Abdul-Mahdi is among four prominent Shiites mentioned as possible premiers. Others are the current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari; nuclear physicist Hussain al-Shahrastani; and Nadim al-Jabiri of the Fadhila party, a religious group whose spiritual leader is radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's late father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr.

The Iraqi women will be freed today and Friday as part of a release of 419 Iraqis who officials concluded there was no reason to continue holding, said Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, spokesman for the U.S. detention command.

Armed men abducted Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, on Jan. 7 in Baghdad and threatened to kill her unless all Iraqi women prisoners were released.

The U.S. military confirmed last week it was holding nine Iraqi women. Today, however, the military said it had detained two more women for alleged insurgent activities in the northern city of Mosul.

Detainees are regularly freed in Iraq following reviews of their cases, a process that can take months, and U.S. officials have said the upcoming releases were part of that routine procedure and not linked to Carroll's case.

In Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, gunmen assassinated a senior official of Iraq's anti-corruption commission and the deputy director of a state-run food stuff company in separate attacks today, police Capt. Farhad Talabani said.