London, Nov. 28: The foreign office in London was tonight checking reports that a number of British Muslims were among those killed and injured when gunmen attacked a mini-bus carrying pilgrims south of Baghdad.

According to Iraqi police, two people apparently of “South Asian heritage” with UK passports have been killed.

The Shia pilgrims were on their way to religious shrines but were ambushed when their bus approached a checkpoint in the Dora neighbourhood. The foreign office would only confirm that one person was in hospital.

A spokesman said: “Our consular and security staff are investigating the reports. They have heard it could be two British nationals, but at this stage we know no more than that. The reports are being investigated.”

Although the foreign office would not disclose any names, the Shia pilgrims were named by the Dawoodi Bohra Masjid in Northolt, west London.

The two shot dead were named by a member of their religious community as businessmen Saifuddin Makai, 39, from Streatham, south London, and Husain Mohammedali, 50, from Harrow, northwest London. They were on a pilgrimage to holy shrines at Karbala, Najaf and Kufa, according to a friend of the victims, Shabbir Abidali.

He named the wounded as Yahya Gulamali, 60, and Ali Qaiyoom, 46, both businessmen, from Harrow, and Zehra Jafferjee, 60, from Wembley, northwest London.

The dead and injured ? four men and one woman ? were taken to Baghdad’s Yarmouk hospital, Iraqi police and hospital staff said.

It is not clear why the Britons were in Iraq since the foreign office has warned British nationals not to travel to that country.

The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who was today at the Euromed Summit in Barcelona, urged Britons to avoid Iraq.

“I have just seen those reports,” he said. “I have no further confirmation of those reports. On the position of UK citizens, we issue very clear travel advice on the foreign office website which is that UK citizens should not travel to Iraq.”

He added: “The only exceptions are where they are subject to proper security protection. That is clear, explicit. We hope British citizens will follow it, but we have no way of obliging British citizens to do so.”

Straw sees no apparent contradiction between the advice given to British nationals that Iraq is too dangerous a country to visit and the line taken by Tony Blair that following the war, the situation in Iraq is vastly better than it ever was under Saddam Hussein.

The news of the deaths comes after the kidnapping of British aid worker Norman Kember, of Pinner, northwest London, who was snatched with two Canadians and an American on Saturday.

Kember, a retired professor, was reportedly taken from a potentially dangerous district of western Baghdad along with the three other members of the group.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, said there were several sites of religious significance in the area where the bus was attacked, with between 5,000 and 10,000 mainly Shia community members taking a pilgrimage from Britain every year.

He said among the revered sites in the country were the tomb of the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed in Karbala and the Prophet’s son-in-law in Najaf. “The most important burial site is, of course, Medina where the Prophet himself is buried, then comes Mecca where many relatives of the Prophet are, and then, of course, come these sites in Iraq,” Sacranie said.