Two foreigners, one of them British, were shot dead and a US armoured vehicle destroyed in a rash of attacks in the increasingly lawless Iraqi city of Mosul today.
Security has deteriorated sharply in Mosul, 390 kilometres north of Baghdad, in recent weeks, further complicating US efforts for an orderly transfer of power to Iraqis in July.
Earlier this month four US missionaries were shot dead in an ambush in Mosul.
The bodies of two men, wearing blue flak jackets, lay in the road beside their burned-out vehicle today long after gunmen attacked it in an eastern part of the city, witnesses said.
"I can confirm that one British national was killed in Mosul," a British foreign office spokesman said. He had no word on the nationality of the second man.
Another source said he was a Canadian national.
An Iraqi technician, who asked not to be identified, had said earlier that both men were British civilians working at the Mosul East power station, near the scene of the shooting.
In another attack, insurgents fired two rocket-propelled grenades at a US Stryker military vehicle on patrol in a western district, setting it on fire, witnesses said.
More blasts shook the Stryker, as its fuel tanks and ammunition exploded, but a US military spokesman said there were no casualties.