Two foreigners were dragged out of their cars and brutally mutilated by angry crowds in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, on Thursday.

They were among the 10 people killed on Thursday in Iraq, including five coalition soldiers whose vehicle ran over an improvised landmine in Al Anbar province, also west of Baghdad.

While US military declined to reveal the nationalities of the soldiers killed, Bloomberg quoted an American official in Baghdad as confirming that they were Americans. Details of the incident were unavailable.

These deaths raise the total number of American military personnel killed in hostilities in Iraq since US President George W Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1 to 294.

In the incident at Fallujah, known as a stronghold of forces opposed to the occupation of Iraq, the two victims, driving four-wheel drive jeeps favoured by the coalition forces, were dragged out of their burning vehicles and dismembered.

Witnesses said residents struck the bodies with shovels, cutting off parts of them while shouting 'long live Islam,' said the BBC.

'The people of Fallujah hanged some of the bodies on the old bridge like slaughtered sheep," the BBC quoted Fallujah resident Abdul Aziz Mohammed as saying. A US passport was apparently filmed beside one of the bodies.

In other developments, at least 12 people including policemen and civilians were injured when a car bomb exploded  in Baquba, north of Baghdad.