The two Maine soldiers killed in Iraq were a young mechanic from a small town who joined the Maine National Guard after high school and a father of two who worked as a shipbuilder at Bath Iron Works, officials said Wednesday.

Sgt. Lynn R. Poulin Sr., 47, of Freedom, and Spc. Thomas “Tommy” Dostie, 20, of Somerville, were among 22 people killed by an insurgent strike while soldiers gathered for lunch a day earlier at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq.

Ten others from the Maine Army National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion were among the dozens of soldiers and contractors injured during the attack.

Maine Gov. John Baldacci delivered his condolences to the families before releasing the victims’ names at a news conference in Augusta.

“All of Maine joins with the families of the injured and fallen soldiers in expressing our great sadness. We offer our prayers to the families of those involved in the attack at Base Marez,” Baldacci said in a statement.

Poulin served as a metal worker with Company A; Dostie was assigned to Headquarters Company and served as a mechanic, Baldacci said.

Seven of the 10 soldiers with the 133rd who were wounded in the attack were treated and returned to duty, Baldacci said. Staff Sgt. Harold Freeman Jr. and Sgt. Christopher Rushlau were transported to a hospital in Germany for additional treatment. Their conditions were not believed to be life threatening.

Also wounded in the attack was a member of the New York State National Guard who was attached to the 133rd, Baldacci said.

In Somerville, word spread swiftly across the town of 500 where Dostie and his brother served as a volunteer firefighter. Dostie’s father serves as the town’s fire chief and his mother serves in the ladies’ auxiliary.

Dostie was remembered as an energetic and outgoing young man who completed basic training between his junior and senior years and then joined the Maine National Guard after graduating from Erskine Academy in 2002.

“He was full of life. That’s the best way to put it,” said Aron Peaslee, a friend of Dostie’s and a member of the National Guard’s 1136th Transportation Company who recently returned from service in Iraq.

Town Clerk Ernestine Peaslee remembered Dostie as a “spirited boy” who was full of fun and came from a solid family.

“We’re such a small community everybody knows everybody,” Peaslee said Wednesday. “It’s just devastating.”

Poulin, who was married with two grown children and two stepchildren, was a resident of the Waldo County town of Freedom and worked at Bath Iron Works.

His neighbor, Jimmy Waterman, described Poulin as a down-to-earth friend who’d do just about anything to help out. Poulin was a shipfitter whose job at Bath Iron Works involved metal fabrication, said Waterman, who also works at the shipyard.

“He was a very self-reliant individual,” Waterman said. “If something needed to be fixed, he would fix it. If it couldn’t be fixed, then he’d fabricate something to make it work.”

Waterman’s wife, Dorothy, said that Poulin’s mother had a premonition when her son was called up late last year that he would not be coming back. “She said she just had a feeling that when he left, he was really leaving. She had a bad feeling,” she said.

In Iraq, some of the soldiers who were friends with Poulin and Dostie received counseling on Wednesday, while others kept busy with projects, said Gregory Rec, a Portland (Maine) Press Herald photographer embedded with the unit.

The battalion’s mission is to maintain and repair everything from airfields and command posts to bridges, and its lumberyard in Mosul serves as a clearinghouse for building supplies being shipped across northern Iraq, Rec said.

The 133rd is due to return to Maine this spring, and the soldiers are busy wrapping up the many projects that are under way, he said.

“They’re coming down to their final stretch, and they have a lot of work to do and a lot of work to wrap up. They’re running around trying to wrap these things up before they start planning and packing to go home,” he said.

Initial reports said a 122 mm rocket ripped through the tent’s ceiling. But the Pentagon’s top general said Wednesday that a suicide bomber was the likely cause of the explosion.

Military officials in Iraq said shrapnel from the explosion included small ball bearings, which are often used in suicide bombings but are not usually part of the shrapnel given off by rockets or mortars.

The mess area where the blast occurred was cordoned off on Wednesday while an investigation was being conducted, Rec said. Soldiers had discussed the vulnerability of the mess tent, and a concrete dining hall was under construction.

Tuesday’s attack brought to seven the number of servicemen with ties to Maine who have been killed in Iraq this year. It wasn’t the first time that tragedy has struck the 133rd since its mobilization last December.

Tuesday’s attack did not represent the first casualties suffered by the 133rd.

Spc. Christopher Gelineau of Portland was killed in a roadside ambush last April. Three other Maine soldiers were injured in that attack, and other soldiers from the 133rd have been injured during other incidents.

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AP reporter Jerry Harkavy contributed to this story.

AP-ES-12-22-04 1740EST