Deadly Iraq violence sweeps country, killing at least eight

Violence in Iraq killed at least eight people, including a police officer, his wife and two children, on Saturday, while gunmen kidnapped 10 security force personnel, officials said.

Gunmen broke into the home of the administrator for the Rashid area, south of Baghdad, killing one of his guards, an interior ministry official told AFP news agency.

They then moved to the nearby house of Captain Adnan al-Obaidi, a police officer in an anti-terrorism unit, and killed him, his wife and their two children, the official said.

A medical official confirmed the toll.

Gunmen also shot dead the imam of a Sunni mosque near the main southern port city of Basra, police and a Sunni endowment official said.

Meanwhile, one person was killed after gunmen clashed with Iraqi forces in several areas in the Anbar province on Saturday, an Al Arabiya correspondent reported.

After the gunmen attacked a checkpoint located on the highway connecting Baghdad with Amman and Damascus, they kidnapped four Iraqi policemen, police sources told the correspondent. The Seventh Division of the Iraqi Army was dispatched to the area to capture the gunmen and find the kidnapped soldiers.

Tensions heightened after a bomb killed more than 50 worshipers inside a mosque and injured 80 others in Baquba, the biggest city in Sunni province Diyala, on Friday.