Bombs exploded across the Iraqi capital on Monday, killing at least 38 people, police said, as suspected Sunni Islamist militants pursued a campaign to provoke intercommunal conflict.

Eight of the 10 blasts in Baghdad were in mainly Shi'ite districts, but there was also an explosion in a mixed area and another in the predominantly Sunni Muslim neighbourhood of Doura.

In the deadliest attack, a parked car blew up in a commercial street in Husseiniya, killing five people.

Separately, four members of a government-backed Sunni militia were killed in a roadside bombing in northern Baghdad earlier on Monday, and six people including a police officer died in fighting between militants and special forces in Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of the capital.

A surge of violence has killed more than 6,000 people across Iraq this year, reversing a decline in sectarian bloodshed that reached a climax in 2006-07.

At that time, Sunni tribesmen banded together and found common cause with U.S. troops to rout al Qaeda, forcing it underground. But al Qaeda has re-emerged this year to join forces with fellow militants in neighbouring Syria.