Witnesses said the shelling occurred at the al-Ghizlani military camp, about three miles south of the city, which is 220 miles north of Baghdad.
The forward operating base is used by both U.S. troops and the interim Iraqi government's security forces, and the identities of the casualties were not known, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. Army's Task Force Olympia is based in this predominantly Sunni Muslim city.
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The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the Internet. It said the attack was a "martyrdom operation" targeting a mess hall in the al-Ghizlani camp.
Ansar al-Sunna is believed to be a fundamentalist group whose goal is to turn Iraq into a tightly controlled Islamic state like Afghanistan's former Taliban regime. In August, the Sunni Muslim group claimed responsibility for the beheading of 12 Nepalese hostages.
It also has claimed responsibility for recent attacks in Mosul.
Mosul was the scene of the deadliest single incident for U.S. troops in Iraq. On Nov. 15, 2003, two Black Hawk helicopters collided over the city, killing 17 soldiers and injuring five. The crash occurred as the two choppers maneuvered to avoid ground fire from insurgents.
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The attack came the same day that British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a surprise visit to Baghdad and described the ongoing violence in Iraq as a "battle between democracy and terror."
Earlier in the day, hundreds of students demonstrated in the center of the city, demanding that U.S. troops cease breaking into homes and mosques there.
Also Tuesday, Iraqi security forces repelled another attack by insurgents trying to seize a police station in the center of the city, the U.S. military said.
"An Iraqi police station came under attack by indirect and small arms fire during a coordinated effort by insurgent fighters to overrun the station in central Mosul," the statement said. "The Iraqi police successfully repelled the attack."
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Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, warned Monday that insurgents are trying to foment sectarian civil war as well as derail the Jan. 30 elections.
During his surprise visit, Blair held talks with Allawi and Iraqi election officials, whom he called heroes for carrying out their work despite attacks by insurgents. Three members of Iraq's election commission were dragged from the car and killed this week in Baghdad.
"I said to them that I thought they were the heroes of the new Iraq that's being created, because here are people who are risking their lives every day to make sure that the people of Iraq get a chance to decide their own destiny," Blair said at a joint news conference with Allawi.
Blair, who has paid a political price for going to war in Iraq, defended the role of Britain's 8,000 troops by referring to terrorism.
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Blair, whose trip to Iraq hadn't been disclosed for security reasons, urged Iraqis to back next month's elections.
"Whatever people's feelings and beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein, and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror," he said.
The British leader said that apart from the insurgents' violence, "there is another choice for Iraq: the choice is democracy, the choice is freedom, and our job is to help them get there because that's what they want."
Allawi said his government was committed to holding the elections as scheduled, despite calls for their postponement owing to the violence.
"We have always expected that the violence would increase as we approach the elections," Allawi said. "We now are on the verge, for the first time in history, of having democracy in action in this country."
Blair said that as the coalition troops train and improve Iraqi security forces, "that brings forward the day that the multinational force can leave." The presence of foreign troops in Iraq is strongly opposed across the Arab world.
Blair flew into the Iraqi capital about 11 a.m. aboard a British military transport aircraft from Jordan. A Royal Air Force Puma helicopter flew from Baghdad airport to the city center, escorted by U.S. Black Hawk helicopters.
It was Blair's first visit to Baghdad and his third to Iraq since the dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003. Blair visited British troops stationed around the southern Iraqi city of Basra in mid-2003 and in January. President Bush had paid a surprise visit to U.S. troops in Baghdad at Thanksgiving in 2003.
Blair flew to Basra later Tuesday.
The British leader was a key supporter of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam. His decision to back the U.S. offensive angered many lawmakers in his governing Labour Party and a large portion of the British public.
Before meeting Allawi, Blair met the commander of the multinational force, U.S. Army Gen. George W. Casey, and the senior British military officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. John Kiszely.
In other violence Tuesday, a U.S. jet bombed a suspected insurgent target in central Iraq and gunmen assassinated an Iraqi nuclear scientist north of Baghdad.
Elsewhere, five American soldiers and an Iraqi civilian were wounded when the Humvee they were traveling in was hit by a car bomb near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
Early Tuesday, a U.S. aircraft engaged an "enemy position" with precision-guided missiles west of Baghdad, the military said.
Hamdi Al-Alosi, a doctor in a hospital in the city of Hit, said four people were killed and seven injured in the strike. He said the attack caused damage to several cars and two buildings.
The U.S. military spokesman could not confirm the casualties.
In Baqouba, a city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, unidentified assailants shot dead an Iraqi nuclear scientist as he was on his way to work, witnesses said.
Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher, a professor at Diyala University, was killed as he drove over a bridge on the Khrisan river. His car swerved and plummeted into the water.
And in northern Iraq, insurgents set ablaze a major pipeline used to ship oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, a principal export route for Iraqi oil, an official with the North Oil CO. said Tuesday. Firefighters were on the scene, 70 miles southwest of Kirkuk.
Insurgents have often targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure, repeatedly cutting exports and denying the country much-needed reconstruction money.