Three Security Force Members Killed in Iraq Attacks

Shootings and bombings in the north of Iraq killed three members of the security forces on Monday, officials said, while a senior leader of al-Qaida's front group was found dead by police.

In Nineveh province, a roadside bomb killed two off-duty Iraqi soldiers as they were driving an unmarked car in al-Kissik, west of provincial capital Mosul, according to army First Lieutenant Khalaf Zaidan.

And in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, 175 kilometers (110 miles) north of Baghdad, gunmen stormed the house of a married couple who both worked in the Facilities Protection Service (FPS), an interior ministry force tasked with securing government buildings.

The attackers kidnapped the husband and killed the wife, according to Kirkuk provincial FPS chief Colonel Sherzad Mufri.

Meanwhile, five people were wounded by a car bomb near a restaurant along the road connecting Baghdad and Balad, around 70 kilometres (40 miles) to the north, according to a Balad police officer and a medic in the town's hospital.

In Anbar province, west of the capital, the accused head of operations in south Baghdad for al-Qaida's front group in Iraq killed himself when the house he was in was surrounded by police, provincial police chief Major General Hadi Arzaij said.

"The terrorist Amid Hamid Jari, who is known as the Wali of south Baghdad for the Islamic State of Iraq, killed himself with a shot to the head when our forces surrounded his home in Saghlawiyah," Arzaij said.

The latest violence comes after the country suffered a spike in unrest in June -- at least 282 people were killed last month, according to an Agence France Presse tally, though government figures said 131 Iraqis died.