Gunmen broke into the home of the administrator for the Rashid area, south of Baghdad, on Saturday 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, his wife and their two children, the official said.

A medical official confirmed the toll.

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

Near Ramadi, west of Baghdad, security forces attempted to arrest Mohammed Khamis Abu Risha, who is wanted in connection with the killing of five soldiers, sparking clashes with armed tribesmen in which two of them were killed, a police captain said.

Mohammed Khamis, the nephew of powerful tribal sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha in Anbar province confirmed that two members of his tribe were killed.

Hundreds of gunmen then gathered in the area of the Anbar Operations Command headquarters near Ramadi, the captain said.

In another incident in the Ramadi area, gunmen ambushed a patrol and kidnapped 10 security force personnel, a police lieutenant colonel said.

The area is one of the main centers of the latest wave of insurgencies in Iraq, which began almost five months ago.