Violence in Iraq has claimed the lives of eight Iraqis and four US servicemen.

Two car bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing a bystander and wounding half a dozen others on Monday.

One detonated in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City, the other in the central district of Karrada, both mostly Shia areas.

The Sadr City explosion killed at least one civilian and wounded seven others, including a nine-year-old boy. Two were wounded in Karrada.

The intended targets were not known, police said.

In Basra, six people were killed in a drive-by shooting in a market area, including a navy officer, two policemen, two workers at an electrical plant, and a boy, police said.

Basra, Iraq's second largest city, is 550km southeast of Baghdad.

In the western province of al-Anbar, three US marines and a sailor were killed in combat, bringing the total toll of US troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 2,339, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.

Dura shooting

Police also reported on Monday that a gang of armed men killed a family in their home late on Sunday.

The police said that in Baghdad's Dura district, four men charged into a Shia home, lined up a brother, two sisters, and an uncle against a wall and shot them.

The father of the family, a grocery shop owner, had been killed six months earlier by armed men in the same neighbourhood, one of Baghdad's most dangerous. The mother was visiting relatives when the attack occurred.

In further incidents, blasts damaged several buildings in the town of Buhriz, 60km northeast of Baghdad, including a barber shop and a grocery in the market district.

Corpses

Police also discovered two corpses in eastern Baghdad, one in Mashtal that was handcuffed and shot in the head, another in Baladiyat that was strangled and covered with bandages.

In Dura, drive-by shooters killed a police captain outside his home late on Sunday, police said. In the northern city of Kirkuk, attackers killed a Sunni cleric on Monday as he headed home from the al-Quds mosque, police said.

Also in the north, the regional government of Kurdistan released the Kurdish writer Kamal Karim just a week after he received an 18-month sentence for articles on a Kurdish website that accused one of the region's leaders of corruption, said Mohamed Khoshnaw, a government spokesman.

Also reported on Monday were two incidents in Baiji. In the first, two soldiers were killed and three were wounded when armed men attacked their patrol, police said.

In the second, a policeman was killed and two others wounded when their patrol was attacked.

The Iraqi government said the Iraqi army arrested 12 fighters near Mosul on Sunday.

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraqis carry the body of a man who was shot in a drive-by shooting in a market Monday April 3, 2006 in Basra, Iraq. (AP)