(Adds Caldwell comments, handover of province)

By Mustafa Mahmoud

KIRKUK, Iraq, April 4 (Reuters) - Gunmen killed 11 electricity plant workers in northern Iraq on Wednesday after stopping their vehicle and machinegunning them as they sat inside, Iraqi police and army officials said.

Police also said 18 goat herders from an extended Shi'ite family were kidnapped near the holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala, 110 km (68 miles) southwest of Baghdad, on Tuesday. It was the second mass kidnapping in a week.

Iraqi and U.S. military commanders have warned that militants are shifting the focus of their attacks to outside Baghdad, where thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops have taken to the streets to crack down on sectarian bloodletting.

Police said gunmen ambushed the vehicle carrying power plant workers in a mainly Sunni area near Hawija, about 70 km southwest of the northern city of Kirkuk.

"Gunmen took advantage of the fact there were no police or army patrols. They stopped the vehicle, sprayed it with gunfire and then fled," said Lieutenant-Colonel Khalil Zobaie of the Iraqi army's 4th Division, 2nd Brigade.

Seven of the workers died instantly while four others were fatally wounded and died later in hospital, police said.

It was not clear whether the attack was linked to an ambush in the same area on Saturday, when gunmen shot dead eight civilian employees of an Iraqi military base. Four brothers were among the dead in that incident.

Police in Nikhaib, west of Kerbala, said gunmen in four or five vehicles kidnapped the 18 Shi'ite goat herders, including two teenage girls, and then drove off in the direction of Anbar province, heartland of the Sunni insurgency.

"All of us face a savage and determined enemy," U.S. military spokesman Major-General William Caldwell told a news briefing in Baghdad, blaming Sunni Islamist al Qaeda for "trying to ignite a cycle of tit-for-tat violence".

On Sunday, 19 men from a Shi'ite village were kidnapped by gunmen at a fake checkpoint north of Baghdad. Their bodies were found on Monday near Baquba, about 65 km north of Baghdad.

EXPLOSION OF VIOLENCE

The security crackdown in Baghdad has succeeded in reducing the murder rate, although car bombings still plague the capital and there has been an explosion of violence in towns and markets outside the city, mainly blamed on al Qaeda.

"What al Qaeda has done, they have deliberately gone against very soft areas where they can get to a larger number of innocent Iraqis," Caldwell said.

The overall number of deaths in Baghdad was down since the start of the security crackdown, but continued car bombings and attacks by suicide bombers wearing explosives vests means there has not been a "significant decrease", he said.

The surge in violence outside the capital also meant there was no large reduction in casualties across the country.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in a wave of sectarian violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis since the bombing of a revered Shi'ite shrine in February 2006 blamed on al Qaeda.

Many attacks are on Iraqi security forces, which the U.S. military has been training in order to take over control of the country's 18 provinces and pave the way for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh announced that Iraqi forces would assume control of the southern Maysan province from British troops later in April. It will become the fourth province under direct Iraqi military control. (Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny, Aseel Kami and Yara Bayoumy in Baghdad)

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