Gunmen kill Shiite family of four

Gunmen killed a Shiite family of four in their home in southern Baghdad, police said today.

The men lined up the parents and two sons in their 20s against the wall in their home in Dora and shot each of them late yesterday, said police Lt. Maithem Abdel-Razzaq.

Sectarian violence has inflamed the capital, where killings have become commonplace and hundreds of bodies have been found in the weeks after the February 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra.

Also in Dora, one of Baghdad’s most dangerous neighbourhoods, drive-by shooters killed a police captain outside his home late yesterday.

Early today, a car bomb exploded in the central district of Karradah, wounding two civilians.