TWO American soldiers were shot in their car in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday and their bodies mutilated and looted by a crowd of Iraqis. Another soldier was killed by a roadside bomb north of

Baghdad.

A spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division said the two soldiers were shot as they drove from one base in the city to another.

Witnesses said that after the shooting the soldiers were stabbed and their throats slit. A crowd looted the civilian car they were driving and tried to set it on fire.

In the United States, meanwhile, the leading Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee said yesterday that more US troops were needed in Iraq now to put down an escalating insurgency.

Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, said if more counter-insurgency and special operations forces were deployed, US troops would be able to withdraw from the embattled country faster.

''There's a direct relationship, us going in now and doing more so that we can get out earlier,'' he said.

''I understand it's incredibly difficult for the president to go to the American people and say we're going to put more troops in,'' Biden said, ''but there is not enough force or the right type of force there at this moment to quell the insurgency.''

Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader of the Senate, said additional American troops ''ought to be an option on the table''.

After the killings in Mosul one man brandished a fistful of bloodstained Iraqi dinars he said were taken from the soldiers.

In Baghdad, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, a US army spokesman, would not discuss how the soldiers died.

A fireman who ran to the scene after hearing gunfire said he saw a crowd of Iraqis ransacking the car. ''People were taking things from the car. I looked inside and saw two soldiers with blood all over them,'' he said.

US troops quickly surrounded the area, in the crowded centre of the city, and interrogated bystanders.

''They hate the Americans in this area,'' said a man waiting for petrol near the scene.

In Baquba, 40 miles north of Baghdad, a 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed and two were wounded when a roadside bomb was detonated as their convoy drove past.

The attacks came a day after suicide bombers detonated cars packed with explosives outside Baquba's police headquarters and a police station in the nearby town of Khan Bani Saad. The bombings killed 17 Iraqis, one fewer than initially thought.

Since Washington declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1, 185 American soldiers have died in action.