A U.S. soldier covers the body of a comrade who was killed following an explosion in Iraq

Additional Reporting By Subhy Haddad, IOL Correspondent

FALLUJAH, Iraq, November 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – With Iraqi resistance attacks proceeding unabated, two more U.S. soldiers were killed Saturday, November 8, in Fallujah, as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced temporarily closing down its offices in Baghdad and Basra.

"Two were killed in action and one wounded when a military vehicle struck an improvised explosive device (IED) at 8:30 am (0530 GMT)," a U.S. military spokeswoman confirmed.

A U.S. army captain in the powderkeg town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, earlier told Agence France-Presse (AFP) the vehicle was a heavily armored Bradley personnel carrier, which differs only slightly from a tank.

This would mark the second time since U.S. troops invaded Iraq that resistance fighters have ripped apart U.S. armor with their explosives.

The first incident was on October 29 when an M1 Abrams tank was hit by a bomb, killing two crew members near the northeastern town of Balad.

The powerful bomb blast struck as the American army was investigating the downing of a Black Hawk helicopter gunship near Tikrit Friday, November 7, killing six U.S. soldiers.

"The investigation is still ongoing. It is still unclear to the cause of the Blackhawk going down," said Major Jossyln Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division.

However, U.S. soldiers have speculated that the chopper was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, as was the case on October 25 when a Black Hawk crashed near Tikrit, leaving one soldier wounded.

Local Saqr Ghani, 19, said he saw one chopper, flanked by another, struck by a projectile.

"I saw one of the helicopters shot from the side and I saw smoke and a ball of fire," said Ghani.

American military jets bombarded a number of houses in Tikrit, some 180 kilometers north of Baghdad, in the first such bombardment since the end of the war last April.

Eyewitness told IslamOnline.net correspondent that U.S. forces also used tanks and armored vehicles in attacking the houses, razing a deserted house and an ammunition depot.

They said that the U.S. forces imposed a curfew on Tikrit following the downing of the Black Hawk.

The occupation authorities have lifted a curfew on all Iraqi cities since the first day of Ramadan, but Tikrit was the only town they re-imposed curfew once again.

The downing of the chopper capped a bloody six-day period for U.S. forces, which started Sunday with the shooting of an American Chinook helicopter outside Fallujah, killing 16 soldiers in the deadliest single strike since the start of the U.S.-led invasion.

Pending the outcome of the investigation into the Black Hawk incident, 146 U.S. soldiers have been killed in combat in Iraq since May 1, when Washington declared major hostilities over, according to an AFP count.

During the main six-week offensive before that date, 114 Americans died from hostile fire.

ICRC Closes Offices

In another development, the ICRC announced Saturday temporarily closing down its offices in Baghdad and the southern Iraqi city of Basra, a spokesman said Saturday.

"We did decide that we will temporarily close offices in Baghdad and Basra but remain present in the north of Iraq," ICRC spokesman Florian Westphal said.

"We do want to make it clear that part of the reason we are doing this because we are deciding against military protection, the two things are connected," he told AFP.

Westphal declined to give more details on ICRC operations in Iraq, including the numbers of foreign staff that would remain in the country and any work that might be done by its majority Iraqi staff, citing security reasons.

Expatriate staff left the Iraqi capital October 30 to discuss the details of a scale-down ordered by the agency following a car bomb explosion at its Baghdad offices three days earlier which claimed the lives of twelve people, including two of its Iraqi staff.