Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Two U.S. pilots were killed in a military helicopter crash in western Baghdad late yesterday that the military described as an accident.

``There was no hostile fire involved,'' the military said today in an e-mailed statement. The names of the Task Force Baghdad pilots are being withheld until the next of kin are notified, it said. No other details were immediately available.

In other incidents yesterday, one American soldier was killed when a rocket-propelled grenade hit his patrol vehicle in Baghdad and another died of wounds sustained from small arms fire in Khalidiyah, according to the military.

The latest deaths bring to 2,166 the number of Americans employed by the military who died in Iraq since the beginning of the March 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, according to a Dec. 23 tally on the Web site of the Pentagon.

There are no official figures on the number of Iraqi civilians who died in the conflict.

U.S.-led and Iraqi troops are struggling to contain an insurgency that is opposing the Iraqi government and seeking to drive out foreign forces by staging attacks against military and civilian targets.

To contact the reporter on this story: Friederike Peters in Berlin at fpeters1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: December 27, 2005 07:37 EST