The gunmen broke into the homes at dawn today in the town of Latifiyah, a mainly Sunni town 30 kilometers south of Baghdad, a police officer said. Authorities later found the bodies, all with gunshot wounds to the head, in remote, rural farmland near the capital, the officer said.
No one immediately claimed the slayings and the motive behind the killing was unclear. Shiite militiamen could be seeking revenge for the ongoing Sunni insurgent attacks against Shiite neighborhoods. Militants with al-Qaida's local branch targets Sunnis in attacks as well or it also could be a personal vendetta.
Since late December, Iraq's minority Sunnis has been protesting what they perceive as discrimination and tough anti-terrorism measures against them by the Shiite-led government. Now some call for Shiites to create armed "popular committees," attached in some form to the regular security forces.
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The ongoing violence also comes as the country prepares for its first parliamentary elections since the withdrawal of US troops on April 30
Meanwhile today, a suicide bomber rammed a fuel tanker into a police headquarters in the northern city of Tikrit, killing three police officers and wounding 13, another police officer said. Tikrit is 130 kilometers north of Baghdad.
In Maidan, a town about 20 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, a bomb in a commercial area killed two civilians and wounded five, police said. Shortly before sunset, a bomb exploded in a commercial street in Baghdad's northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, killing four people and wounding 11, police said.