29 Shiite villagers massacred in Iraq

Dozens of Shiite villagers in northern Iraq were massacred by Sunni extremists, officials said today, while car bombs killed at least a dozen people in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Shiite legislators loyal to anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr decided to end their five-week boycott of parliament, one of their leaders said.

The Shiite protest along with a separate Sunni boycott had blocked work on key benchmark legislation demanded by the US.

Police Col. Ragheb Radhi al-Omairi said 29 members of a Shiite tribe were massacred overnight in Diyala province when dozens of suspected Sunni gunmen raided their village near Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north-east of Baghdad. The dead included four women, al-Omairi said.

Al-Omairi said he had not seen the bodies and it was unclear whether they had been retrieved.

An Iraqi army officer said the attack occurred in the village of Diwailiya and that at least 10 bodies were mutilated in the hour-long raid.

In Baghdad, the deadliest bombing occurred when a suicide driver detonated his vehicle near an Iraqi army patrol in Zayouna, a mostly Shiite area of eastern Baghdad, killing 10 people including six civilians. Police said 11 people, including seven civilians, were injured.

A blast near the Iranian Embassy occurred in late morning a few hundred yards north of the US-controlled Green Zone, sending a huge cloud of black smoke over the city. Three civilians were wounded.

Also today, the bodies of two security guards were found in the western Baghdad neighbourhood of Mansour, two days after they were kidnapped from the office of a mobile phone company where they worked, police said.

American forces have launched offensives around the Iraqi capital to try to halt the flow of bombs and fighters into the city. The latest strike began yesterday south-west of the city in an area where al Qaida and other groups have been active for years.

The US command announced that American soldiers had killed about a dozen insurgents during a three-hour gunfight yesterday in the Fadhil district, a Sunni enclave in the centre of the city. The battle began when paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division came under fire from the Islamic Bank building, the military said.