Iraq: Women and children shot dead in field

Gunmen attacked women picking vegetables in a field outside the Iraqi capital, killing six adults and two young girls and kidnapping two teenagers.

Police said they suspected the gunmen in yesterday’s attack were Sunnis seeking to intimidate Shiites into fleeing the area south of Baghdad. Previous major attacks in Iraq have killed many women and men together, and at times individual women have been shot or kidnapped but rarely have large groups of women been attacked.