"Two Marines assigned to First Marine Expeditionary Force were killed in action on January 13, while conducting security and stability operations in the Al-Anbar Province," a military statement read yesterday.

The marines gave no further details. The deaths raise the toll to 1,355 soldiers killed in action since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The military also officially confirmed the death of a soldier in the restive northern city of Mosul, which AFP reported Thursday.

Gunmen shot dead another member of Iraq's electoral commission, west of Baghdad, late Thursday, an interior ministry official said yesterday.

He was the eighth electoral official to be killed in the run-up to elections planned for January 30.

"Abdel Kerim Jassem al-Oubeidi, director of the voting station at Al-Salam, in Al-Amel district, west of the capital, was gunned down on Thursday" evening, said the official, who asked not to be named.

"He was hit by several bullets in the head," he added.

Last Tuesday, a senior commission official Adel al-Lami said seven members of the electoral body had been killed by insurgents trying to disrupt the elections planned for January 30.