Two civilian employees of the Department of Defense were killed the evening of March 9 in a terrorist attack, according to Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) spokesman Dan Senor.

"I can confirm that two American citizens and one Iraqi citizen were killed last evening in an attack," Senor said at a CPA briefing March 10. "The two Americans were CPA officials. The Iraqi citizen was a translator, a subcontractor," he said.

Senor, senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority, said, "This was a targeted act of terrorism, and as such, Ambassador [Paul] Bremer has requested an FBI team be deployed to lead the investigation, working with the Iraqi police service and the coalition forces." Senor added that the CPA considers the killings to be "under U.S. jurisdiction."

Names of the American victims had not been released, Senor said, because the next of kin had not yet been notified. He also declined to give out details of the incident, but he cautioned that some news reports he had seen were not correct.

"I would be careful in how you all cover this story," Senor told reporters. "The facts are still coming out, and we're going to wait on the investigation."

Asked why the victims may have been targeted --- whether they had been chosen beforehand or simply picked at random, Senor would not comment. "[I]t is clear that this was an attack on civilians, an attack on civilians that are officials of the coalition and an Iraqi national that is working with the coalition. And that is an act of terrorism, and we will treat it as such," he said.

In response to another question Senor said the two Americans were "the first and second DOD civilian employees that fall under a certain program of civilian employees that are deployed to Iraq to work under the CPA ... under what we call the 3161 program."