Baghdad - US forces in Iraq said Thursday that an Iraqi soldier killed two US soldiers and injured another six in the northern city of Mosul on Wednesday.

An Iraqi soldier opened fire on a group of US soldiers while they were waiting in a courtyard of a building, a US army official said in Baghdad. The US soldiers returned fire and killed the Iraqi soldier.

Iraqi witnesses had earlier told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the Iraqi soldier killed four US soldiers because the Americans mocked him while he was praying. Other sources said their had been a verbal dispute between the Iraqi soldier and the US soldier.

US forces denied that there was any interaction between the US troops and the Iraqi soldier before the killings. They also confirmed that only two US soldiers had been killed and said that none of the other injured had suffered life-threatening injuries.

The US forces said that the incident was the first time an Iraqi soldier was killed by US forces.

Also in Mosul, the unidentified body of a man was found on the west side of the city. The body had signs of gunshots, police sources told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency. In a separate event, 11 people, including six soldiers, were injured in a town east of Mosul when a car bomb exploded.

In another incident, a bomb planted in a minibus killed a civilian and injured another six passengers inside the bus. The detonation took place in Mohamed al-Qassem street in south-eastern Baghdad, VOI reported. (dpa)