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-Qaeda’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 kilometres (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-Qaeda’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.
