Gunmen killed nine members of two Shi?ite families in Baghdad yesterday, police said, a day after militias raided a mixed neighbourhood and forced dozens of Sunni families to flee in an escalation of sectarian violence.

Police said about 20 gunmen killed a father and three sons of one Shi?ite family and five brothers of another after storming their homes in a mostly Sunni area in southwestern Baghdad. The father was a Shi?ite policeman, police said. Two of the victims of the other family had common Shi?ite names. One Interior Ministry source confirmed one of the two families killed was Shi?ite. But another ministry source said relatives who claimed the bodies were Sunni.

The attack came a day after gangs of Shi?ite militiamen burned homes and killed at least two people in broad daylight in the religiously mixed Hurriya district in western Baghdad, officials and witnesses said. Dozens of Sunni families, including women and children, fled Hurriya on foot and in trucks at nightfall in one of the worst incidents of sectarian cleansing in the capital in weeks. Interior Ministry sources said they found three headless bodies in Hurriya yesterday.

Iraq has been in the grip of a cycle of killings and reprisals pitting majority Shi?ites against once-dominant Sunnis since the bombing of a Shi?ite shrine in February. US officials have warned that attacks by Sunni al Qaeda militants and Shi?ite militias threaten to tear Iraq apart. Close to half a million Iraqis have fled their homes as towns, cities and even neighbourhoods are carved up along sectarian lines. Many fear these divisions could pave the way for a civil war.

Outgoing US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the main architects of the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein and a lightning rod for criticism of the war, made an unannounced visit to US troops in Iraq.

Calls for revenge

?The enemy must be defeated,? he said. ?General (John) Abizaid (U.S. Central Command Chief) said: ?We can certainly walk away from this enemy but they will not walk away from us,?? he was quoted on the Department of Defense Web Site as telling troops in Anbar province, heartland of the Sunni insurgency. A bipartisan panel in Washington exploring strategy alternatives to U.S. President George W. Bush?s policies in Iraq described the situation in Iraq as ?grave and deteriorating?.

Interior Ministry sources and witnesses in Hurriya, a neighbourhood with pockets of Sunnis and Shi?ites, said gunmen from the Mehdi Army militia loyal to Shi?ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were behind the attack. Some 80 people who were forced to flee took refuge in a school in neighbouring Amil district. Witnesses said the attack was in apparent revenge for the killing last month of 202 Shi?ites in a multiple car bombing attack in Sadr City, a Shi?ite stronghold and a bastion of the Mehdi Army.

?The Mehdi army started attacking and burning houses in Hurriya on Saturday morning. They broke through houses and burned them. The Iraqi army only watched,? Ahmed Ali al- Hashemite told Reuters. An old man wept and cried for revenge. ?I call upon all Sunnis to carry guns and fight the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, who burned our houses and displaced us,? the old man said.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed and more than 2,900 US troops have died since a 2003 US-led invasion toppled former President Saddam Hussein.

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■ Iraq?s president said yesterday he rejected a long-anticipated list of recommendations by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to change US policy in the region. ?I think the Baker-Hamilton report is unfair and unjust,? Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, told in a news conference at his Baghdad residence. ?It contains very dangerous articles that undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and its constitution,? he said. The report by the Iraq Study Group, led by former US Secretary of State James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton, urged more centralised control of Iraq?s vast oil wealth and embedding thousands more US advisers in Iraq?s security forces.