Five people died in a car bomb attack in Baghdad's central Zawr Park and another five were killed in a mortar attack in central Baghdad's Tehran square, an interior ministry official said.
Three Iraqis were shot dead in separate rebel attacks.
Against a backdrop of violence, representatives of the country's parliamentary blocs met President Jalal Talabani to finalize the lineup of the first permanent government of the post-Saddam Hussein era, almost five months after a landmark election.
Although the details of Monday's political meeting were not known immediately, a source close to the negotiations said that prime minister designate Nuri Al Maliki was expected to announce the new cabinet soon.
Following his nomination, Maliki had said that he would form the cabinet by May 10 and had pledged to appoint independent candidates to head the country's important security posts.
The leaders of the dominant Shia United Iraqi Alliance were in a meeting on Monday to name its candidate for the crucial interior ministry, the source said.
The Shia leaders were considering independent Shia MP Qassem Daoud to head the interior ministry or retaining the controversial incumbent Bayan Jabr Solagh, the source said. Daoud has close links with former prime minister Ayad Allawi.
Sunni Arab politicians have strongly criticized Solagh and accused his ministry's Shia-led forces of operating death squads that indulged in extra-judicial killings of Sunni Arabs.
The United States sees a national unity government as the only way to curb the violence that has raged since the toppling of Saddam in 2003 and pave the way for the eventual withdrawal of its 132,000 troops.
Since the February bombing of a revered Shia shrine in the northern town of Samarra, Iraq has been roiled by Shia-Sunni tit-for-tat sectarian killings that has left hundreds dead.
Bodies of brutally murdered men have been found scattered across Iraq in sectarian-related violence, while 35,000 civilians have died in violence related to Iraq's Sunni-led insurgency since the end of the US-led 2003 invasion, according to some estimates.
On Monday, police recovered nine bodies, six in Baghdad, of men who had been tortured and killed in sectarian violence.
Three bodies were found in the town of Mahawil, south of Baghdad. The dead men were police commandos who were kidnapped a few days back from the town, police said.
On Sunday police had announced the discovery of 45 bullet-riddled bodies of men across Iraq.
The US military said on Monday that it had killed wanted "terrorist" Ali Wali, a member of the mainly Kurdish Ansar Al Islam militant group, in a Baghdad raid.
The military said that Ali Wali, whose full name was believed to be Abbas Bin Farnas Bin Qafqas, a known chemical expert, was killed during a raid in Baghdad's upscale Mansour district on Saturday at 1 pm (0900 GMT).
The US military also announced the deaths of two US soldiers in Iraq.
One soldier was killed on Monday when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb during a patrol southeast of Baghdad.
The other soldier was killed on Sunday in the northern town of Tal Afar when US forces were "assisting Iraqi security forces clear a building from which several rebels were firing at civilians and US-Iraqi forces", the military said.
One more soldier was wounded in the clash.
The latest fatalities brought the US military death toll in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 2,418, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
Meanwhile, a team of British experts was due in Iraq to probe the cause of a helicopter crash on Saturday that left five soldiers dead, including the first British servicewoman killed in action in Iraq. The chopper was reportedly shot down by an insurgent rocket in the southern city of Basra.
The crash sparked bloody clashes on Saturday with at least five Iraqis killed and dozens wounded when British troops sent to recover the dead from the helicopter encountered an angry mob.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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