US troops shot dead two Iraqi civilians during clashes with Iraqi guerrillas in the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, witnesses said on Monday.

They said the US troops opened fire on Sunday night on a vehicle carrying the two civilians after an American convoy was ambushed by guerrillas.

The US military has said four US soldiers were wounded in an attack on Sunday with rocket-propelled grenades in Ramadi, a volatile town about 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad.

On Saturday, seven recruits to a US-backed Iraqi police force were killed in Ramadi when a remote-controlled bomb exploded outside a police station where they had just graduated from police training.

"We heard a huge explosion last night at about 11:30 and then Iraqis fired an RPG at American troops in a vehicle. The Americans sped away and were then involved in clashes up the road," one witness to Sunday's clash, Jibayir Makhlif, told Reuters.

"The ambulance came and took the two bodies of civilians from this car. The Americans shot them last night," he said as a group of a dozen Iraqis inspected a bullet-riddled Toyota pickup truck.

Staff at Ramadi general hospital said that three US vehicles arrived there late on Sunday night and left a body of a decapitated man.

"The Americans brought him here and they told us he did not stop at a checkpoint, so they shot him," hospital official Taha Hussein told Reuters.

US-led occupying forces have been coming under almost daily attack in recent weeks, more than two months after US President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1 after toppling Saddam Hussein in April.

One US soldier was killed in Baghdad on Sunday. He was shot in the head at Baghdad University.



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