Honolulu-born CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier was critically wounded and four others were killed yesterday when a car bomb exploded beside their patrol in central Baghdad.

Dozier, 39, who spent her preschool years in Kailua and still has two brothers and other relatives living in Hawai'i, was hurt in a midmorning blast in central Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood. It was part of a surge of bombings that ripped across the capital and its surrounding provinces that killed at least 40 people.

The blast killed the two British members of Dozier's CBS-TV crew, an American soldier and an Iraqi translator.

Dozier, who has been reporting from Iraq for the past three years, was in critical condition at a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad's Green Zone.

She underwent two surgeries for injuries, said Kelli Edwards, a CBS News spokeswoman. By early today, doctors had removed shrapnel from Dozier's head but said she had more serious injuries to her lower body, CBS News reported on its Web site.

Dozier arrived at Ramstein Air Base in Germany early today and was headed to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, military officials said.

Dozier's relatives were planning to head to Germany, a man who answered the phone at her mother's home in Maryland said last night.

"We would like her entire Hawaiian 'ohana to pray for her," Marion Dozier, Kimberly Dozier's aunt who lives in Kihei, Maui, told The Advertiser last night.

Kimberly Dozier, one of six children, has a brother, Douglas, living in Kailua and a brother, Robert, living on the Big Island, Marion Dozier said.

Marion Dozier said her niece became a journalist after displaying a knack for languages and acquiring a taste for living abroad as a child.

Kimberly Dozier was born in Honolulu and lived in Kailua until she was 5, when the family moved to Guam. Her father Ben, a construction engineer, built shelters for Vietnamese orphans brought to Guam. The Doziers later adopted one of the orphans they met there, a girl named Mei Lei, Marion Dozier said.

Two years later the family moved to Hampstead, Md. When Kimberly was in grade school they moved to Iran, where Ben Dozier was sent to build an airfield.

After the family moved back to Maryland, Kimberly Dozier attended Wellesley College and then went to Israel for a year where she lived on a kibbutz and learned Hebrew. "Living all over the world like that, she had already been bitten by the (travel) bug," her aunt said.

Kimberly Dozier earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Virginia and got a job with Christian Broadcasting in Jerusalem before joining CBS, her aunt said.

When the crew of a U.S. Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane made an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island on April 1, 2001, Kimberly Dozier got into the country without the Chinese government's approval, her aunt said.

The reporter made her way to an alley behind the prison where the U.S. aviators were being brought to be detained for 11 days, and phoned in a live report to CBS anchor Dan Rather, Marion Dozier said.

Kimberly Dozier also could speak to Iraqis in their languages, her aunt said.

CBS named the dead TV journalists as veteran cameraman Paul Douglas, 48, and sound man James Brolan, 42. Both based in London and veterans of many wars, they were embedded with Dozier at the time of the attack with soldiers from the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division in Baghdad, according to a statement issued by the network.

There were conflicting reports on whether the car they were in was moving or parked when it detonated.

According to CBS and Iraqi police, the journalists were reporting outside their armored Humvee when the blast occurred just before noon in Tahariyat Square in south-central Baghdad. The blast collapsed the front end of the Humvee.

All three journalists were believed to have been wearing protective gear at the time, CBS said.

The military did not name the U.S. soldier killed in the attack. The deaths of the two journalists brought to 71 the number of journalists killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion, the overwhelming majority of them Iraqis

It was not clear whether the car bomb was intended to hit the U.S. patrol or was one of a string of bombings across Baghdad yesterday that included three others in Karradah, a Shiite neighborhood.

Outside Baghdad, 14 Iraqi civilians employed on a base used by the Iranian opposition group People's Mujahedeen of Iran were killed when a bomb targeted the bus carrying them to work in Khalis, about 50 miles north of Baghdad.

Also yesterday, the U.S. military said it was deploying its main reserve fighting force for Iraq to Anbar. The full 3,500-member armored brigade will serve as emergency reinforcements for the embattled western province, where a surge of violence linked to al-Qaida in Iraq has severely damaged efforts to turn Sunni tribal leaders against the insurgency.

The Chicago Tribune, Associated Press and Washington Post contributed to this report.