Baghdad, Sep 12 (IANS): An Iraqi police officer was killed in a roadside bomb explosion carried out by the Islamic State (IS), while security forces arrested two senior members of the terror group, the military said.

Khalid al-Sarheed, a police officer from Nineveh province, was killed in the blast on Saturday while a reinforcement force dispatched to support Iraqi forces were attacked in by IS militants in a village near the town of Makhmour, some 60 km southeast of Nineveh's provincial capital Mosul, Xinhua news agency quoted the military as saying.

Meanwhile, a force affiliated with the Iraqi intelligence service arrested a senior IS militant, named as Abu Ibrahim Dabiq, after a month and a half of tracking him in the provinces of Kirkuk, Nineveh, Baghdad, and Anbar, said a statement by the media office of Joint Operations Command (JOC).

The arrested militant is responsible for forming many terrorist groups, including a previously captured group which was planning to carry out bomb attacks and assassinations inside Iraq's semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, the statement said.

The intelligence force arrested another senior IS militant, who is responsible for coordinating activities among leaders, the statement added without giving further details.

Over the past few months, IS militants have intensified attacks on Iraqi security forces in the provinces where the militants previously controlled, leaving dozens dead and wounded.

The security situation in Iraq has been improving since security forces defeated IS militants in 2017.