Masked gunmen have killed three Sunni Arabs in front of horrified witnesses outside a mosque in Mosul, after grabbing them as they hung posters urging fellow Sunnis to vote in a referendum on the new constitution.

Gunmen seized three members of Iraq’s largest Sunni Muslim party today and shot them dead hours later in front of a mosque in Mosul, an official of the party and witnesses said.

Gunmen today opened fire on a convoy carrying conservative Shiite MP Salamah al-Khafaji, one of the most prominent women in Iraq’s new parliament, critically injuring four of her bodyguards.

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.

An important Sunni cleric has urged Iraq’s new president to resist US pressure and free thousands of suspected rebels, a sign the religious group most often associated with the Iraqi insurgency might be willing to work with the new government.