A series of suicide blasts has hit government and police buildings around Iraq's capital Baghdad, killing at least 14 people.



Police say at least eight people were killed and 20 others injured on Sunday when eight suicide bombers targeted police stations and the local council, a police station and an army checkpoint in the town of Rawa, west of Baghdad.

Police Captain Mohammed Ahmed al-Rawi said two suicide bombers on foot and another driving a vehicle rigged with explosives attacked the police headquarters for the area, while another driving a vehicle hit an army checkpoint at the town's entrance.

That attack claimed head of the local council, two council members and five policemen.



Earlier in the day, at least six civilians were killed and 10 injured when a roadside bomb and a car bomb, targeting the house of the chief of police, exploded in Tikrit, home town of former president Saddam Hussein, north of Baghdad.

The latest attacks bring the death toll to more than 450 so far this month, and over 5,150 since the beginning of the year, according to figures from the news agency AFP based on security and medical sources.

A study released this month by academics based in Canada, Iraq and the United States said nearly half a million people had died from war-related causes in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.