A WAVE of sectarian rage swept across Iraq yesterday leaving at least 110 people dead and the violence-wracked country careering towards civil war.

Gunmen in Iraq shot dead 47 civilians and left their bodies in a ditch near Baghdad today as militia battles and sectarian reprisals followed the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine yesterday.

Saddam Hussein’s former intelligence chief, Ibrahim Barzan, today insisted that he ordered the release of dozens of prisoners, making his most lively defence yet on charges he was involved in torture and executions in a crackdown against Shiites in the 1980s.

Iraq’s new electoral law, drawn up in a bid to address the concerns of minorities, is almost certain to guarantee more parliamentary seats for Sunni Arabs, who boycotted the previous vote in January.

An indefinite curfew was imposed Wednesday for all vehicle and pedestrian traffic in the central Iraqi city of Samarra, following an attack on a US convoy in the area, the US military and Iraqi police said.

A suicide car bomber was among 11 people killed in an attack north of Baghdad, Iraqi police and hospital officials said today.

Clergy-backed Shiites and independence-minded Kurds swept to victory in Iraq’s elections, according to final results released tonight.

A suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body in front of a police station in a Kurdish town near the Iranian border, killing eight people on the eve of Iraq’s crucial national election, Iraqi and US officials said.