Armed men have shot and killed an Iraqi judge as he was leaving his home in eastern Baghdad, police sources say, while six US soldiers have died in separate incidents.

Judge Qais Hashim Shammari was killed with his son in a roadside ambush, the sources said on Tuesday.

US soldiers killed

Meanwhile, six US soldiers were killed in two separate incidents around Baghdad.

A US soldier was killed in a bomb blast in Baghdad on Monday, the US army said in a statement on Tuesday.

"A Task Force Baghdad Soldier died of wounds at approximately 7pm (1600 GMT) on 24 January. The soldier sustained the injuries when a patrol was attacked with an improvised explosive device in western Baghdad," the military said.

Also on Monday, five 1st Infantry Division soldiers died and two were injured in a vehicle accident near Khan Bani Saad, north of Baghdad, a US military statement said on Tuesday. One of the wounded was in a serious condition.

The deaths raise the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq to 1374 since the March 2003 invasion, 296 of them in non-combat incidents, according to the latest figures from the Pentagon.

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraqi civilians are detained inside a U.S. Army vehicle during a weapons raid at a gas station in Mosul, Iraq Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2005. (AP)