Iraqi soldier kills two U.S. soldiers

By Tim Cocks

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi soldier went on the rampage at a joint security station in northern Iraq on Wednesday, shooting dead two U.S. soldiers and wounding six, the U.S. military said.

The U.S. military said the soldier opened fire on the Americans at the station -- one of many in which Iraqi and U.S. troops operate side by side -- in the city of Mosul.

"The soldiers were in the courtyard ... an Iraqi soldier entered and shot two soldiers, killing one, mortally wounding another, and then spraying the others," said U.S. army spokeswoman for northern Iraq Major Peggy Kageleiry.

"He was engaged by counter-fire and killed," she added. A local morgue said it had received the body of the Iraqi soldier, riddled with bullets.

Two local police sources and an Iraqi army source, all of whom declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject, said a quarrel had broken out between the Iraqi and U.S. soldiers at the joint station.

But Kageleiry denied there was any altercation between the soldiers before the shooting.

"The U.S. soldiers had no conversation with this soldier and there was no interaction of any kind before they were murdered," she said.

(Additional reporting by Khalid al-Ansary; editing by Tim Pearce)