At least ten people, including several police officers, have been killed in attacks in and around the Iraqi capital.

Three people were killed and another six wounded when a car bomb went off in the Karrada district near the center of Baghdad on Monday, a hospital official said.

Another car bomb went off on Palestine street, killing a policeman and wounding two others on a main thoroughfare through the predominately Shi'a western side of the city, a security official said.

The blast sent a column of black smoke into the colored sky.

In the chaotic southern suburb of Zafraniyah a roadside bomb killed at least one person and wounded another 13, including four policemen.

Elsewhere, gunmen opened fire on Iraqi police patrolling northeast of Baghdad, killing three of them, a local hospital official said.

In the northern city of Mosul two members of the former dictator Saddam Hussein's defunct Baath Party were killed in separate attacks late Sunday. One of the men, Najim al-Iraqi, had been a senior party member.

South of Baghdad, police found the body of a woman who had been shot dead.

HS/IS