BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb exploded in front of a hospital in a mostly Shiite town south of Baghdad Saturday, killing 17 and wounding 21, police and hospital officials said, a day after 23 were killed in two attacks aimed at the Shiite community.

A police captain who refused to give his name said the Saturday blast occurred in front of the main hospital in Musayyib, 35 miles south of the capital in a religiously mixed area that's been the scene of frequent attacks by Sunni Muslim insurgents.

Elsewhere, a prominent Iraqi judge under Saddam Hussein, Taha al-Amiri, was assassinated Saturday by two gunmen in the southern port city of Basra, said Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaidi.

Al-Amiri, a former chief judge at Basra's highest criminal court, is one of several former Baath Party figures assassinated in the Basra area the past 18 months. Suspicion has fallen on Shiite extremists seeking revenge for Saddam's oppression of the majority Shiite community.

Police in Mosul said they discovered the bodies of six men dressed in Iraqi National Guard uniforms dumped on a main highway near the city. The bodies of six Kurds who had apparently worked for as security guards were also found in Mosul, a hospital official said.

The six Iraqi National Guardsmen had been shot in the chest and head, said police Lt. Ali Hussein. They were found in the area of Intisar, east of Mosul.

Attacks against Iraq's security forces have steadily risen following the Jan. 30 national elections. Insurgents have vowed to intensify their attacks against the Iraqi forces at a time when the United States is trying to give those forces more security responsibility.

But the body count of police seems to be particularly high in Mosul, the country's third-largest city, which has now become another flashpoint in the running battle between insurgents and U.S. and coalition troops.

Last week, a suicide bomber walked into a crowd of Iraqi policeman in Mosul, killing himself and 12 policemen. In December more than 150 bodies of mainly Iraqi security forces were found in Mosul in the space of one month.