An Iraq boy looks at the destruction at a church following an attack on Tuesday in the Iraqi northern city of Mosul. Two churches in Mosul came under simultaneous attack today, witnesses and clerics said, but there were no immediate reports of casualties. Gunmen stormed into the city's Chaldean and Armenian churches in the latest attacks on Iraq's minority Christian community. PHOTO: AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin cast doubt about the viability of holding elections as planned next month in an Iraq under "total occupation", as the number of US soldiers killed in combat neared 1,000.

In the latest violence, assailants targeted the country's minority Christians by setting off explosions in two churches -- one of them Chaldean, the other Armenian -- in the northern city of Mosul, but without causing casualties.

"Each attack against a church pushes Christians to emigrate," said Faid Touma Hermez of the Chaldean Democratic Union. The insurgents "want to erase any trace of the Christian presence in Iraq."

In Baghdad, one US soldier died after his patrol was ambushed, the military said.

A total of 999 US military personnel have now been killed in action in Iraq since the US-led invasion of the country in March 2003, according to Pentagon statistics.

In other violence, an Iraqi entrepreneur working for US forces was shot dead in his car near an American base in Samarra, north of the capital, police said. Some 40 such killings have been carried out in the region over two months.

"I cannot imagine how elections can be organized in conditions of total occupation of the country by foreign troops," Putin said as he met Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi at the Kremlin.

But US President George W. Bush, visiting a marine base at Camp Pendleton, California, promised that voting "will proceed as planned" with heightened US troop levels. He declined to say when US forces would leave Iraq.

General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in the Gulf, said American troops in Iraq could have a different role overall after the elections, as their focus could shift away from combat and toward training Iraqi forces.

"If the Iraqi security forces start to gel in terms of leadership and seasoning in important areas around the country -- which I think will happen -- then we can talk about reshaping our forces," he told the Washington Post.