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BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two American soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb damaged their Humvee, the military said today. U.S. officials worried that Iraqi police - not impostors in their uniforms - may have been behind the shooting deaths of two coalition staffers and their translator.

The two soldiers died when the Humvee they were riding in struck a homemade bomb on Thursday northeast of Habbiniyah in the Sunni Triangle, the heartland of the anti-U.S. insurgency.

A third soldier was wounded in the blast. The troops were part of the 1st Brigade Combat Team of Task Force All American, part of the 82nd Airborne Division.

The deaths brings to 556 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the United States launched the Iraq war in March. Most have died since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.

In Baghdad, a prominent supporter of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was shot and killed in Baghdad's al-Shawafa district, Adnan al-Safi, a spokesman of the movement, said today.

The shooting of Kazim al-Sayed Musa al-Ghoriebi on Thursday came hours after a Sunni Muslim cleric was wounded in what he claimed was an assassination attempt against him that killed his son and son-in-law.

Nazem Khalaf, a cleric at the Rahman mosque in Abu Dsheer, a suburb in southwestern Baghdad, said that assailants drove up next to his car and opened fire.

In central Baghdad, thousands of Shiites rallied against the U.S. presence in Iraq, chanting "Kill America, kill America" and "Yes, yes to Islam."

Protesters hurled stones at a passing pair of armored civilian SUVs, of the type often used by coalition workers or plain-clothes security officials, forcing the vehicles to back away. There were no injuries.

The American civilians slain Tuesday along with their translator were the first from the U.S. occupation authority to be killed in Iraq. The attack raised two possibilities: that guerrillas had adopted a new tactic of posing as police to carry out attacks, or that some members of the security forces being trained by U.S. troops are turning to violence.