American trucker Thomas Hamill escaped from his Iraqi captors Sunday, according to his employer, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root.

Hamill, who was kidnapped April 9 when his fuel convoy was ambushed near Baghdad, escaped not once, but twice by jimmying open a door on the house where he was being held in Balad, a city about 40 miles north of Baghdad. The first time he didn’t reach a passing American convoy in time and returned to his room when he ran out of water in the desert. He made his second and final escape when he heard an American military convoy pass nearby.

At least five truckers were killed in the same convoy attack – Steven Hulet of Manistee, MI; Jack Montague of Pittsburg, IL; Jeffrey Parker of Lake Charles, LA; Tony Johnson, of Riverside, CA; and Steven Scott Fisher of Virginia Beach, VA. Two more truckers remain missing from the attack. They are Timothy Bell of Mobile, AL; and William Bradley of Galveston, TX.

Although Halliburton has not referred to its missing or dead employees as truckers, several news reports have identified them as truckers.

With more than 700 trucks on Kuwaiti and Iraqi roads, Kellogg, Brown and Root estimates its drivers log about 3.3 million miles per month. The company and its subcontractors have lost about 34 personnel while performing services in Kuwait and Iraq.

Hamill, who has an infected bullet wound in his left arm, was flown to Ramstein Air Base in Germany for medical treatment and debriefing. His wife, Kellie, is flying there for a reunion with her husband.

--by René Tankersley, staff writer

René Tankersley can be reached at rene_tankersley@landlinemag.com.