In the fiercest fighting the city has seen in weeks, about 50 Iraqis used rocket-propelled grenades and a car bomb in the assault that took U.S. troops two hours to contain late Wednesday afternoon.

Fifteen U.S. troops were wounded and one of them later died of his injuries.

The insurgents armed with a car bomb tried to blast the concrete barriers of the combat outpost and a U.S. armored vehicle raced to the scene firing its .50-caliber machine gun to explode or disable the bombs.

Two F-18 and two F-14 military jets were also deployed, which swooped down on strafing runs and also fired Maverick missiles, wiping out much of the insurgent force, said military spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Hastings.

The attack came eight days after a suicide bomber killed 22 people in Mosul after infiltrating a U.S. military mess tent at a military base.