Revenge attacks in Iraq

Shouting for revenge after the slaying of 14 Shi'ite workers, black-clad militias killed at least 31 people in a spasm of sectarian violence in a town north of Baghdad, police, doctors and local residents said yesterday.

There was also violence in the restive northern oil city of Kirkuk yesterday, where four car bombs, three of them detonated in suicide attacks, exploded in quick succession, killing 10 people and emptying the streets as terrified residents stayed indoors.

US and Iraqi troops patrolled the city as helicopters hovered overhead. In one of the worst attacks, a suicide bomber blew up his car outside a teachers' institute for women, killing four people. They included two students who had been standing at the main gates and were burnt beyond recognition.

Three US soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, the US military said, adding to a toll that, at the current pace, could make October the deadliest month for US forces since January 2005. Nearly 60 have been killed so far.

Iraq has been gripped by sectarian violence between Muslim Shi'ites and Sunnis since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in February. Thousands have been killed in tit-for-tat revenge killings and more than 300,000 have fled their homes.

In the town of Balad, 80 km north of Baghdad, the weekend killings were swift and brutal.

Militiamen riding in pick-up trucks set up fake checkpoints on Saturday, stopping vehicles and checking IDs in response to the killing of the workers, whose bodies were found on Friday in an orchard with their throats slit and hands and legs bound.

Some of the bodies brought to the hospital in the last 24 hours were mutilated and bore signs of torture from what appeared to be reprisal sectarian attacks across Balad, a mostly Shi'ite town surrounded by Sunni areas.