Police found 30 more victims of the sectarian slaughter ravaging Iraq – most of them beheaded – dumped on a village road north of Baghdad.

AIDES of a radical Shi’ite cleric met yesterday with a key Sunni group seeking to ease sectarian tensions in Iraq, while gunmen killed a top trade ministry official as a spree of violence that followed the announcement of a new government entered its fourth week.

Sectarian tension whipped through Iraq as thousands of Shiite and Sunni Muslim protesters mixed calls for an end to America’s occupation with stinging condemnations of each other.

An Iraqi delegation sent by a national conference in Baghdad flew to besieged Najaf by helicopter today to present radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr with a peace proposal aimed at ending a violent insurgency wracking the holy city.