BAGHDAD, June 27: Insurgents killed at least 27 people in bombings and shootings in Iraq on Wednesday, including 10 in a car bomb in a Baghdad Shia neighbourhood after nightfall, security officials said.

The car bomb exploded at an intersection in the northwestern Kadhimiyah neighbourhood of Baghdad, which houses the revered shrine of Imam Musa Kadhim.

In earlier attacks across the country, 17 people were killed among them nine policemen.

Samarra, north of Baghdad, was shaken by a roadside bomb which targeted a police patrol, killing five police officers and two civilians, police Captain Alaa al-Samarrai said.

The attack, which wounded another two people including a policeman, took place in a neighbourhood near the revered Shiite shrine of Al-Askari.

The shrine was bombed earlier this month and since then the town has seen several other attacks.

In north Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded in a market, killing five people, according to a security official citing an initial report. The official said another 10 people were wounded.

One civilian was also killed in a suicide car bomb attack on a police checkpoint in central Baghdad's Jadiriyah neighbourhood.

Unidentified gunmen, meanwhile, killed four policemen and wounded one when they attacked a police station in the town of Taza, near the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police Major General Torhan Yussef said.

The ethnically volatile city of Kirkuk, claimed by both Arabs and Kurds, has seen increased violence in recent months.

Meanwhile US-led forces continued to battle insurgents on the outskirts of the war-weary capital.

Six insurgents were killed when a British warplane bombed a building south of Baghdad following an attack on an Iraqi police checkpoint on Tuesday, the US military said.

The Tornado fighter plane dropped a 2,000-pound bomb after insurgents attacked a police station and checkpoint near Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad.—AFP