Two U.S. soldiers were killed and nine others wounded on Tuesday when a man wearing an Iraqi army uniform opened fire during a meeting inside an Iraqi army compound in the town of Tuz Khurmato, north of Baghdad. The deaths were the first U.S. casualties in Iraq since President Barack Obama announced the start of Operation New Dawn on Aug. 31, marking the end of conventional combat activities in the country for American troops. Commanders here have said the new U.S. focus is on advising and assisting Iraqi forces and backing them in areas where they lag in terms of technology and equipment. But Tuesday's attacklike a sophisticated assault on Iraqi facilities in central Baghdad on Sunday that American soldiers helped to repelunderscored what U.S. military commanders on the ground in Iraq have been saying for weeks: A change of mission doesn't mean the threats are over for the estimated 50,000 U.S. soldiers that remain in the country. That is especially the case in many parts of northern Iraq, including the area where Tuesday's attack occurred. American soldiers still have a higher-profile presence here than in the rest of the country. In the north of the country, U.S. forces share some bases with Iraqi forces and conduct joint patrols and counterinsurgency operations, as they do elsewhere. But they also staff joint checkpoints located on strategic roads. According to Maj. Lee Peters, a U.S. military spokesman in northern Iraq, Tuesday's attack happened while U.S. soldiers were meeting with Iraqi soldiers, members of the local police force and the Sons of Iraq, an anti-al Qaeda Sunni Arab militia that was funded by the U.S. military a few years ago but now answers to Iraqi forces and the government. The meeting was taking place at an Iraqi army commando base outside Tuz Khurmato, about 130 miles north of Baghdad. At around 4 p.m. local time, a man in an Iraqi army uniform opened fire on the U.S. soldiers, who were part of the security detail of a U.S. Army officer present. The assailant killed the two U.S. soldiers and wounded nine before he was shot dead by a U.S. soldier, according to Maj. Peters. "This is a tragic and cowardly act, which I firmly believe was an isolated incident and is certainly not reflective of the Iraqi Security Forces in Salahaddin," said Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq. Tuz Khurmato is located in the northern tip of Salahaddin province and adjacent to oil-rich Kirkuk province. The town is inside a swath of territory stretching from northwestern Iraq near the Syrian border to the northeast near Iran that is claimed by both the semiautonomous Kurdistan region and the central government. At the start of the year, the U.S. military launched a joint security arrangement in the area under its supervision and involving the Iraqi army and police and Kurdish forces, in an effort to reduce Kurdish-Arab tension and prevent insurgent groups from exploiting the rift. As of Sept. 1, there were about 9,600 U.S. soldiers operating in northern Iraq. They are located at eight U.S.-only bases and 16 other bases shared with Iraqi forces, according to the U.S. military. Also on Tuesday, an Iraqi journalist was shot dead by unidentified gunmen, the Associated Press reported. Riyad Assariyeh worked for state-run Al Iraqiya TV. The Baghdad Operations Command, a government security task force, confirmed on its website that the journalist was killed in Baghdad's Al-Harthiya neighborhood, but gave no details of how it happened. (WSJ)