The bomb exploded a 7:30 a.m. Wednesday as an American military patrol was driving down a two-lane highway in Jurf al Naddaf, a town just south of Baghdad, said police Lt. Col. Sabah Hussein. The blast missed the convoy but hit a private minibus behind the convoy, killing and injuring the Iraqi civilians, Hussein said.

The area where the attack occurred is known as the triangle of death because of frequent attacks there by Sunni-led insurgents against Americans and Shiite Muslims.

Elsewhere, U.S. ground and air forces launched fresh attacks Wednesday near the Syrian border, destroying several insurgent "safe houses," killing a militant leader and stopping an insurgent cell from planting roadside bombs around the border town of Husaybah, the military said.

Coalition forces also announced that they recently killed a top regional al-Qaida in Iraq insurgent in Mosul, 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, and captured two Yemeni fighters in the Iraqi capital.

The new attacks occurred after the fourth deadliest month for U.S. forces in the Iraq war. At least 93 American service members died during October, many of them victims of homemade bombs that the Pentagon says are becoming more powerful and technologically sophisticated.

At least 2,028 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Faced with an unrelenting insurgency, the U.S. command is accelerating counterinsurgency training for newly arrived officers to give them the latest tactics about protecting patrols from such attacks.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, confirmed on Wednesday that the U.S. command will soon open a new training school at Taji, an air base 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Baghdad.

The New York Times reported that the school will be for newly arrived Army and Marine officers and will train them in insurgent tactics, teach them how to find and destroy roadside bombs and provide information on Iraq's many insurgent factions.

The newspaper said Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, established the school because of increasingly flexible and deadly attacks by insurgents.

Soldiers and Marines already receive some counterinsurgency instruction in the United States before leaving for Iraq, but the newspaper said some senior U.S. commanders have expressed concern that the instruction has been uneven and lags behind the fast-changing tactics that insurgents use in Iraq.

The academy will give intensive one-week courses, the report said.

In Baghdad, Iraq's government announced that a raid in Mosul last Thursday killed four insurgents, including Abdul Sattar, identified as a key al-Qaida in Iraq leading militant operations there.

The U.S. military said its forces raided the Baghdad homes of two suspected al-Qaida insurgents carrying Yemeni passport and detained them Tuesday night. It said the men were on a reconnaissance mission and may have been involved in planning car bomb attacks.

The U.S. command also said its Soldiers detained 12 suspected insurgents after a roadside bomb and small-arms fire attack against coalition forces early Tuesday in eastern Baghdad. Searching a nearby cement factory, U.S. and Iraqi forces found more than 65 AK-47 rifles, 120 AK-47 magazines, three machine guns and three ammunition drums, the military said.

On Tuesday, the government blamed a Syria-based Moroccan for the triple car bomb attack that killed dozens of people north of Baghdad in the city of Balad. The government identified him as Muhsen Khayber, also sought in his homeland for the terror bombings in Casablanca in May 2003.

In a statement, Iraqi officials alleged that Khayber masterminded the Sept. 29 attack in which three vehicles exploded almost simultaneously in Balad, killing at least 60 people.

The statement said Khayber moved last year to Syria "where he helped organize terrorist cells for foreign terrorists" who were sent to neighboring Iraq.

Syria has denied any support for Iraqi insurgent groups and insists that it is trying to control the porous border.

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