HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Now I want to go to Nic Robertson in Baghdad, where he's following the sharp rise in violence aimed at U.S. troops there. Hello to you, Nic.</s>NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Heidi. Well, according to security experts here, there is a spike up in the level of attacks against U.S. forces and against other coalition interests here inside Iraq. They do say -- because it's getting closer to September 11th, they appear to be noticing this spike. What we've seen in the last 24 hours are two U.S. soldiers killed. One died this morning, trying to defuse an improvised explosive device. It detonated when he was working on it. The explosion could be heard about a mile away. A plume of smoke went up from the site. One other soldier injured there. The other soldier died on Tuesday evening, as his convoy was driving in the Baghdad area, again, hit by an improvised explosive device. And later in the night, Tuesday evening, in Irbil, well north of Baghdad, in the north of Iraq, in the Kurdish area, a Toyota sports utility vehicle went off, exploded. It was a car bomb. It killed one Iraqi guard at a -- what was -- been described as a U.S. safehouse in the town of Irbil, injured 47 other Iraqis, also four people working for the Department of Defense were injured as well. And another attack, this was in Baji, again, in the north of Iraq, mortars fired at a U.S. base there, two soldiers injured. The whole picture is adding up. Security experts here are saying to appear to be a spike in the attacks against U.S. forces in advance of September 11 -- Heidi.</s>COLLINS: All right, CNN's Nic Robertson, live from Baghdad, thanks so much, Nic.
Two U.S. Soldiers Killed in Past 24 Hours