Three motorbikes rigged with explosives blew up in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra late on Wednesday, killing at least eight people and wounding at least 22, a doctor and police said.

A doctor at Sadr Hospital in Basra said that at least eight people were killed and 22 wounded in the blasts, while a police lieutenant colonel gave the same toll.

Basra province police chief General Faisal al-Abadi said that the explosives-laden motorbikes, which were parked in the city centre, had detonated about 8:00 pm (1700 GMT).

He had earlier put the toll at two killed and at least 30 wounded.

Meanwhile, gunmen shot dead a man who worked in the finance department in parliament, as he drove in the Mansur area of west Baghdad on Wednesday morning, an interior ministry official said.

And a vegetable seller was killed and his daughter wounded by a magnetic sticky bomb on a vehicle in the ethnically divided northern oil hub of Kirkuk, police said.

Violence has declined nationwide since its peak in 2006 and 2007, but attacks remain common. A total of 258 people were killed in October, according to official figures.