Islamic State militants have captured and killed an Iraqi police colonel and eight other officers during a skirmish in the battle for western Mosul, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.
The official said the incident took place as government forces closed in on Islamic State fighters in the Old City and other districts, in an offensive intended to crush the hardline group in what was once the de facto capital of their self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate.
The Interior Ministry official said the nine men were seized and killed in the early hours of Monday in the Bab Jadid district.
Federal police sources later said Iraqi forces were trying to recover the bodies.
Islamic State has a record of torturing and mutilating captives - civilian and military - so the incident will weigh heavily on the minds of the government troops in the street-by-street fighting for western Mosul, now in its second month.
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Meanwhile, in the capital, Baghdad, a car bomb killed at least 23 people and wounded more than 45 in a mainly Shi'ite southern district, police and medical sources said.
The battle for Iraq's second city is expected to last several more weeks.
