Officials said Wednesday the bodies of two South Korean workers killed in an ambush in Iraq will be flown to Kuwait as soon as possible before being repatriated to their home country.

On Tuesday, Seoul's acting Ambassador to Iraq, Sohn Se-joo, flew to a U.S. military base in Balad, a city about 100 kilometers north of Baghdad, where the bodies are being kept.

The bodies had been flown from a U.S. military base in Samara, about 40 kilometers north of Balad, near where the deadly attack took place.

Officials said Sohn confirmed the identities of the two victims as 61-year-old Kwak Kyung-hae and 46-year-old Kim Man-soo, both employed by a South Korean electric company.

They were shot dead by suspected Iraqi insurgents near Samara on Sunday on their way to Tikrit, the ancestral home of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Two other South Korean workers were wounded in the attack, but are expected to recover.

Meanwhile, Seoul's foreign ministry said Wednesday that it had directed all Korean workers of Omu Electric Company, the employer of the victims of the attack, to halt construction of electric towers in Iraq, take refuge at a safe place, and refrain from unnecessary activities outdoors.