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A car bomb killed four people and wounded eight more in the Iraqi capital on Thursday, shortly after two rockets slammed into the city centre, killing two civilians, police said.

Three policemen and a civilian were killed by the car bomb in the once upscale Mansur neighbourhood of west Baghdad, a police official said, adding that two policemen were among the wounded.

Two Katyusha rockets hit Sadoon Street at around noon (0900 GMT), killing two people and wounding four more, police said.

A roadside bomb that apparently targeted a minibus in the Al-Jadida neighbourhood of Baghdad killed another person and wounded four more, a police official said.

Officials say hundreds of rockets and mortar rounds have been fired into the city since late March, mainly from Sadr City, the east Baghdad stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

In the enclave itself, gunbattles between Shiite fighters and US forces killed seven people and wounded 20 others, Iraqi security and medical officials said on Thursday.

A security official said the clashes erupted before midnight and continued until Thursday morning.

A medic at Al-Sadr hospital, one of the main medical facilities in the impoverished Shiite district of some two million people, said seven bodies had been brought in.

The US military was not immediately available for comment.

Since March 25, US and Iraqi forces have been battling militants, mostly from Sadr's Mahdi Army. Hundreds of people have been killed in the clashes.

Meanwhile, a former senior Al-Qaeda leader in central Iraq, now working in one of the so-called Awakening groups alongside US forces, survived a suicide bombing on Thursday north of Baghdad.

Officials said the suicide bomber detonated his explosives as Mullah Nadhom Mahmud's convoy was passing through the town of Dhuluiyah, some 70 kilometres (40 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraqi police Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed al-Jubburi said.

Jubburi himself was in the same vehicle but escaped unhurt. He said Mahmud, 30, and three others were wounded.

Sunni leader Mahmud quit Al-Qaeda and with a band of some 650 fighters has been supporting US forces. For the past six months he has been enforcing security in Dhuluiyah alongside Iraqi police.

Al-Qaeda put a 100,000-dollar (65,000-euro) bounty on Mahmud's head and he has been targeted numerous times. Seven months ago a bomb attack peppered his left leg with shrapnel.