11 reported killed in U.S. raid north of Baghdad

Shiite official's son killed
Late Tuesday, a roadside bomb exploded as Ali Karim, an official with the Shiite Badr group, drove through Tuz Khormato, 130 miles north of Baghdad. He was unhurt but his son was killed and nine other people were injured, said police Brig. Sarhad Qadir. The Badr group is linked to a Shiite militia accused of widespread abuses by Sunni Muslims.

The deaths of 87 men were blamed on deepening sectarian violence in recent days — most of them shot to death execution-style. Twenty-nine of the bodies were dug out of a single grave Tuesday in a Shiite neighborhood of east Baghdad.

The timing of the killings linked much of the bloodshed to revenge slayings for a bomb and mortar attack in a Baghdad Shiite slum that killed 58 and wounded more than 200 on Sunday.

Revenge was swift in some cases, and on Monday and Tuesday, police uncovered the bodies, marking the second wave of sectarian retribution killings since bombers destroyed the golden dome of a Shiite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 23. More than 500 people were reported killed, many of them Sunni Muslims and their clerics. Dozens of mosques were damaged or destroyed.

Underlining the uneasiness in Baghdad, Interior Ministry officials imposed another driving ban — from 8 p.m. Wednesday to 4 p.m. Thursday — to guard against bombings while the Iraqi parliament holds its first session since the Dec. 15 election.

After the driving ban was announced, the Cabinet said Thursday would be a holiday in the capital. Restrictions on movement also were put in place on the two weekends after the Samarra bombing.

Scores of frightened Shiite families have fled predominantly Sunni parts of Baghdad in recent weeks, some at gunpoint.

On Tuesday, the U.S. command reported the deaths of two more soldiers in fighting in insurgent-infested Anbar province. That raised the death toll of U.S. military members killed since the start of the war in March 2003 to 2,310, according to an AP count.

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