An attacker wearing an Iraqi army uniform shot and killed two US soldiers outside the volatile northern city of Mosul today.
"We have reports of a small arms fire attack in Hamam al-Alil, 20 km (12.5 miles) south of Mosul," said Major Derrick Cheng, a spokesman for the US military in Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province.
"There are initial reports of two US soldiers killed in the attack ... According to initial reports, an individual dressed in an Iraqi army uniform fired on the coalition forces and was killed in the incident."
An Iraqi police lieutenant-colonel in Mosul, who declined to be named, said the man who shot the US soldiers was an Iraqi soldier who also acted as an imam at an Iraqi military training centre in Hamam al-Alil.
He said the American soldiers were doing exercises in the training centre's yard at the time of the attack. He did not know what had happened to the attacker afterwards.
Mosul and Nineveh are a last remaining bastion of al Qaeda and about a dozen other Sunni Arab insurgent groups and the city is still rocked by frequent shootings and bombings.
Some of those insurgent groups have infiltrated Iraqi forces in the past.
US troops are due to withdraw from Iraqi cities by the end of June under a bilateral security pact but U.S. officials say that, if the Iraqi government requests it, Mosul may be the sole exception.