(CNN) Just hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that President Donald Trump wants a reduction in American troop levels in Afghanistan before the 2020 election, the US military announced that two US service members had been killed in that country on Monday.

The US military did not provide additional details about the deaths and the names of the service members were withheld so that next of kin could be notified. Kandahar police told CNN that an Afghan solider opened fire on the service members. A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousof Ahmadi, also confirmed the incident in a media message Monday, saying the Afghan soldier was wounded after the exchange of fire. The American service members are the fourth and fifth to be killed in Afghanistan in a little over a month.

In remarks at the Economic Club of Washington, DC, earlier in the day, Pompeo said that Trump had "been unambiguous" in his directive: "end the endless wars, draw down, reduce. It won't just be us."

Pompeo has repeatedly stated that reducing US troop levels would be conditions-based, but has typically shied away from discussions around timing for a withdrawal.

"I'd love to get to a place where I felt like we had enough counterterrorism posture still in the region and in the country that we could substantially reduce the number of soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines that are at risk there every day," he said in an interview with Fox News last week, noting that US and NATO forces would be "leaving together."

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