Badjoudj, who would have turned 19 on Dec. 16, allegedly blew himself up Oct. 20 while driving a car filled with explosives near a US patrol on Baghdad's airport road, wounding two American soldiers and two Iraqi police officers. He is thought to be the second French citizen to have carried out a suicide attack in Iraq.
The body of Hakim, 19, reportedly was found July 17 after US troops bombed a suspected insurgent hide-out in Fallujah, the city west of Baghdad that was overrun this month by American and Iraqi troops.
French officials also confirmed the death of a third French insurgent, identified as Tarek W. In his 20s, he reportedly was killed Sept. 17 after operating for several months in the so-called Sunni Triangle in Iraq, where most foreign fighters are based. No other details were available.
Although the number of French-born fighters in Iraq seems small -- perhaps a dozen or more -- counterterrorism officials worry that some of the young men of mostly Tunisian and Algerian descent will return home with combat skills to wage jihad in France.
''They become like stars," Gilles Leclair, director of France's Anti-Terrorism Coordination Unit, said. Leclair confirmed the deaths of Hakim, Badjoudj, and Tarek W., and he suggested there are more young men like them in Iraq.
''We have intelligence information that some people are still present in Iraq," Leclair said. But he said ''it's too early to say we have 10, 15, 40."
Hakim and Badjoudj lived in the same northern Paris neighborhood. Both were unemployed and came from broken families.
''If he had work, this wouldn't have happened," said Badjoudj's uncle, Hicham. ''He saw no future for himself."
The uncle, who insisted that he be quoted only by his first name, said Badjoudj never knew his father, an Algerian who left his Tunisian mother when he was 3 and his brother Sabri was about 1. Badjoudj's mother -- Hicham's sister -- had five more children with her second husband, an Egyptian, and may be living in Syria or Egypt, he said.
