Attacks in and around Baghdad, including four car bombs that ripped through several different neighborhoods, killed at least 16 people on Monday, security and medical officials said.

Attacks in and around Baghdad, including four car bombs that ripped through several different neighborhoods, killed at least 16 people on Monday, security and medical officials said.

In and around the capital on Monday, four car bombs killed 12 people while authorities said they found the dumped bodies of three men and a woman. All were shot in the head and they appear to have been tortured.

Seven people were killed in two separate car bombs -- one of which was detonated by a suicide attacker -- in the town of Mahmudiyah, just south of the capital.

Five others were killed by vehicles rigged with explosives in the Baghdad neighbourhoods of Baladiyat and Hurriyah.

North of Baghdad in restive Diyala province, five soldiers were also wounded in a gun attack on their checkpoint.

The violence comes amid a long-running surge in bloodshed that left more than 1,000 people dead last month, the highest such figure since April 2008, according to government data.

Adding to the insecurity in the country, Iraqi forces have been waging gun battles with al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in Anbar province, to the west of Baghdad, where for weeks parts of one city and all of another have been outside of government control.