BAGHDAD, Iraq - Militants killed two Iraqis execution-style and wounded four U.S. security contractors in a roadside bombing Saturday in violence across northern Iraq. Iraqi officials prepared to announce arrangements to bring detained Saddam Hussein regime members before a court next week.

The American contractors, employed by Florida-based Cochise Security Inc. to dispose of Saddam-era munitions in the northern city of Beiji, were wounded in an early morning blast. Two of the wounded were hospitalized. Three Cochise employees were killed in two separate April attacks in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad.

Gunmen killed two men, apparently Iraqis, in execution-style slayings in Beiji, police Capt. Hakim Ali said. Police Both wore civilian clothes while one had his hands tied behind his back. Contractors and Iraqi security forces supporting the U.S.-led coalition have been targeted by insurgents bent on derailing Iraq's reconstruction.

An Iraqi militant group calling itself the "Jihad Brigades" claimed responsibility in a video posted on a Web site Saturday for the slaying of two American contractors on Dec. 8. Joseph Wemple, a builder from Orlando, Fla., and his boss, Dale Stoffel, vice president for international development for CLI USA, died in the ambush outside Baghdad. CLI USA is a Pennsylvania-based engineering-construction contractor.

Iraq's insurgency appears to be consolidating in northern Iraq following intensive U.S.-led military operations in central and western Iraq aimed at uprooting militants, comprising mainly Islamic extremists and loyalists of the deposed dictator, Saddam Hussein loyalists.

In a bloody ambush Friday, militants killed four men, three of whom were believed to be Turkish security personnel attached to the country's embassy in Baghdad, in Mosul, 90 miles north of Beiji.

Four bodies, including one that was decapitated, were strewn over the road and pavement near their burning Chevrolet Caprice in western Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city. At least one body was set alight as onlookers gathered around the grisly scene.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Hastings said Saturday the attack happened on one of Mosul's most dangerous roads, a 2.5 mile stretch of highway between two traffic roundabouts on the main route leading from Turkey to Baghdad.

Insurgents attacked patrolling U.S. forces with gunfire from eastern Mosul's Sheik Yassin mosque on Friday, Hastings added. The soldiers responded by entering the mosque, but the rebels fled.

In another northern city, Kirkuk, American troops shot at a car that sped toward a checkpoint after ignoring orders to stop, military spokesman Master Sgt. Robert Powell said. The car's occupants - a man, two women and a 5-year-old girl - were wounded in the Friday shootings and hospitalized.

Meanwhile, Iraqi officials are expected to release details on this week's start of investigative hearings at Special Tribunals for gathering evidence against detained members of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Saddam's defense minister, who surrendered to U.S. forces last year, and a notorious general known as Chemical Ali are expected to be the first defendants to face hearings against Baath regime detainees.

Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad surrendered in September 2003 at a coalition military base in Mosul, but was not considered a war crimes suspect .

In contrast, Ali Hassan al-Majid, who earned the sobriquet Chemical Ali after using poison gas to kill thousands of Kurds in the 1980s, is considered a leading defendant.

Saddam, who has been accused on a range of war crimes-related matters, will not be among those to be brought first before the hearings, The Associated Press has learned.

The U.S. Embassy confirmed the name of an American contractor kidnapped Nov. 1 in Baghdad - a man who has not been seen or heard from since - identifying him as Roy Hallums, a contractor for Riyadh-based Saudi Arabian Trading and Construction Company that does catering for the Iraqi army.

"As far as we know, Hallums is still being held captive along with the Filipino," said U.S. Embassy spokesman Bob Callahan.