U.S. military officials confirmed Thursday the arrest of the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq's Mosul branch as the death toll continued to rise in the country.

Mohammed Khalaf, also known as Abu Talha, was arrested Tuesday, U.S. forces said. Khalaf is believed to be a top aide to Jordanian-born terrorist leader Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.

"Talha was one of al-Zarqawi's most trusted operation agents in Iraq. This is a major defeat for al Qaeda terrorist organization in Iraq," Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston, spokesman for the Multinational Force in Iraq told AP.

Meanwhile, the death toll for U.S. forces continued to rise on Thursday, with word a suicide car bomber has killed at least eight police officers on the outskirts of Baghdad.

The blast happened on the capital city's airport road, and reports say that at least 25 people were injured.

The reports say the bomber hit a truck that was carrying the officers. They were on their way to take part in a shift change a security checkpoint.

Also on Thursday, five Marines were killed after their vehicle was attacked near Ramadi.

Meanwhile, a judge and his bodyguard were killed in Mosul when masked gunmen sprayed the judge's car with machine-gun fire.

Officials also found the corpses of five family members at a farm in Musayyib, south of Baghdad. The remains of six others were found in the town of Latifiyah, officials said.

Alston blamed al-Zarqawi for the "fantastic rise" in the number of civilian deaths since the Shiite-led government took office April 28.

"With Zarqawi's push recently, we certainly see the fantastic rise in the number of civilians killed, given that he has proclaimed that taking out civilians is an acceptable thing," said Alston.

The swell in violence by insurgents appeared aimed at derailing stepped-up efforts by Shiite politicians to bring the disaffected Sunni Arab minority into the political process.

On Thursday, Shiite politicians completed efforts to include the minority group in the work of drafting Iraq's groundbreaking constitution when they reached agreement on how many Sunni representatives there will be in the body.

The agreement broke weeks of deadlock over the issue of Sunni representation.

The new charter must be approved by Iraq's parliament by mid-August and will be put to a nationwide vote. If it passes, a new election will be called in December.