BAGHDAD - Guerrillas killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded a third in an ambush in western Iraq, the military said Sunday.

With the latest deaths, 104 coalition troops have died in November in Iraq, with guerrillas killing 79 American soldiers and 25 allied troops, making it the bloodiest month of the war that began March 20.

The military said the U.S. troops were killed when a task force from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was hit Saturday by rocket-propelled grenades and automatic fire east of the border town of Husaybah, 180 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Also Sunday, the U.S. military said the collision of two Black Hawk helicopters in Mosul on Nov. 15 - the single deadliest incident of the war for American forces - may have been caused by enemy fire. Until now, the military had not said publicly what caused the collision in which 17 soldiers died.

"It appears to be that one helicopter was hit by a (rocket-propelled grenade)," Col. Joe Anderson, a commander with 101st Airborne Division told The Associated Press.

Despite the higher number of casualties this month, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said the overall number of guerrilla attacks on coalition forces declined toward the end of November.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq, said Saturday that attacks on U.S.-led forces have dropped some 30 percent in the past two weeks, from a daily average of 35 to 22. On the worst days earlier this month, there were as many as 50 attacks a day, Sanchez told reporters at a news conference in Baghdad.