12 people, including a police officer, his wife and two children, have been killed in fresh violence in Iraq, while gunmen kidnapped 10 policemen, officials said.
Armed men early on Saturday broke into the home of the administrator for the Rashid area, south of Baghdad, killing one of his guards, an interior ministry official said.
They then moved to the nearby house of Captain Adnan al-Obaidi, a police officer in an anti-terrorism unit, and killed him and his family, the official said.
The violence comes a day after more than 70 people were killed in bombings in majority Sunni districts in Baghdad and surrounding areas, in what has been noted as the deadliest day in Iraq in more than eight months.
Gunmen ambushed and kidnapped 10 policemen near Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, a Sunni heartland bordering Syria.
Also in Ramadi, clashes between security forces and armed tribesmen on Saturday left two members of the tribe dead. The fighting broke after security forces attempted to arrest Mohammed Khamis Abu Risha, who is wanted in connection with the killing of five soldiers.
Abu Risha is the nephew of powerful tribal leader Ahmed Abu Risha, who is a key supporter of Sunni anti-government protesters in the western Anbar province and who led the uprising against al-Qaeda in the province from 2007.
Elsewhere in Anbar, four state-backed so-called Sahwa fighters were killed in an attack by gunmen on their headquarters on the outskirts of Garma city.
Meanwhile, an imam of a Sunni mosque was shot dead near the main southern port city of Basra, officials said.
Martin Kobler, the UN envoy in Baghdad, called for Iraqi leaders to stop the violence.
“It is the responsibility of all leaders to stop the bloodshed in this country and to protect their citizens,” he said in a statement on Friday.
In the deadliest attack on Friday, twin bombings near a Sunni mosque in Baquba, north of Baghdad, killed 41 people and injured dozens.
One bomb exploded as worshippers were departing the Saria mosque while a second went off after people gathered at the scene of the first blast, police said.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
