BAGHDAD - At least six people were killed and seven others wounded in a gunfire and car bomb attacks near the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Sunday, the police said.

Some 20 km west of Baghdad, gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in Abu Ghraib area, killing three soldiers, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Iraqi security forces chased the attackers in the area and killed two of them and captured a third, the source said.

In a separate incident, three car bombs went off almost simultaneously in different places in Taji area, just north of Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding seven others, an Interior Ministry source anonymously told Xinhua.

The explosions are seen as part of a series of bomb attacks that hit the Iraqi cities on Sunday and killed 52 people and wounded more than 184 others.

Violence in Iraq has ebbed from its climax in 2006 and 2007, when sectarian conflicts pushed the country to the brink of a civil war, but tensions and attacks remain common across the country.