Gunmen kill 41 Sunnis in Baghdad rampage

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Masked Shiite gunmen roamed through west Baghdad's Jihad neighborhood Sunday, dragging Sunnis from their cars, picking them out on the street and killing them in a rampage that police said left 41 people dead in a dramatic escalation of sectarian violence.

Hours later, two car bombs exploded near a Shiite mosque in the city's north, killing 17 people and wounding 38 in what appeared to be a reprisal attack, police said.

Sunni leaders expressed outrage over the killings, and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, appealed for calm, warning that the nation stood "in front of a dangerous precipice."

Presidential security adviser Wafiq al-Samaraie told Al-Jazeera television that "we are at the gates of civil war" unless "exceptional measures" are taken.

The brazen attacks were likely to further enflame Shiite-Sunni tensions and undermine public confidence in Iraq's new unity government. They also raise new questions about the effectiveness of the Iraqi police and army to curb sectarian violence in the capital.

The trouble started about 10 a.m. when several carloads of gunmen drove into the Jihad area along the road to Baghdad International Airport, police and witnesses said. The gunmen stopped cars, checked passengers' identification cards and shot dead those with Sunni names.

Masked gunmen wearing black clothes roamed the streets, abducting Sunnis whose bodies were found later scattered throughout the religiously mixed neighborhood, an Interior Ministry official said. Residents contacted by telephone told of gunmen systematically rounding up and massacring Sunni men.

A Shiite shopkeeper said he saw heavily armed men pull four people out of a car, blindfold them and force them to stand to the side while they grabbed five others out of a minivan.

"After ten minutes, the gunmen took the nine people to a place a few [yards] away from the market and opened fire on them," Saad Jawad al-Azzawi said.

Wissam Mohammad al-Ani, a Sunni, said three gunmen stopped him as he was talking toward a bus stop and demanded his identification. They let him go after he produced a fake ID with a Shiite name, but they seized two young men standing nearby.

Police and Shiite leaders speculated the rampage was carried out in retaliation for a Saturday night car bombing at a Shiite mosque that killed two people and wounded nine.

Clashes also broke out between gunmen and Iraqi police in at least three neighborhoods across the capital, police and residents said. Three Shiite militiamen were killed in fighting with security forces in one of them, police said.

The spokesman for a Sunni clerical association, Mohammed Beshar al-Faydhi, blamed the Jihad attack on the Mahdi Army militia, led by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Faydhi told Al-Jazeera television that he had documents to prove his allegation.

Al-Sadr denied responsibility and called on both Shiites and Sunnis to "join hands for the sake of Iraq's independence and stability." He assured Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, leader of the largest Sunni Arab party, that he would punish any of his militiamen if they were involved.

Other developments

• An American soldier died in a "noncombat-related incident," the U.S. command said without giving further details.

• In the western city of Ramadi, a car bomb exploded next to a U.S. convoy, wounding four American soldiers.