Two US soldiers die in central Iraq (Roundup)

Aug 4, 2008, 16:02 GMT

Baghdad - Two US soldiers were killed and three wounded in 'non-battle-related' incidents over the weekend, the US military said on Monday.

One of the soldiers was killed and two wounded Saturday near a US military base in Diyala province to the north-east of Baghdad, the military said in a statement, without giving further details.

The second soldier was killed and one wounded in a vehicle accident south-west of Baghdad Saturday. The deaths bring US fatalities in August to three.

On Sunday the US military announced the first death of US soldier in August also as a result of a non-combat accident to the north of Baghdad on Saturday.

The lowest monthly toll of US soldiers to die in Iraq since the 2003 invasion was recorded in July, with 11 troops losing their lives, the independent website icsualties.org reported on Friday.

Some 222 US soldiers have been killed so far this year, bringing to 4,130 the number who have died since the US-led invasion.

In other incidents, three people were killed and five injured when a bomb went off in a cafe in Iraq's Hillah province. The explosion caused serious damage to a coffee shop popular with young people, witnesses told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. Several cars were also damaged.

Hillah province is located 100 kilometers south of the capital Baghdad.

The Iraqi army killed two unidentified gunmen who attacked an army checkpoint at a manufacturing area west of the northeast city of Mosul, an army source told Voice of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

The Iraqi army confiscated the gunmen's vehicle and seized two Kalashnikov rifles and an RPG 7 rocket launcher.

An unidentified gunmen shot a civilian and injured another in the market area at al-Kut province, VOI reported. Police cordoned off the area in an attempt to catch the assailant, who escaped before the police arrived.