Gunmen raided a small town near Baghdad and shot dead at least 25 people in what police said this morning was a sectarian attack by Sunnis on Shias, latest in a string of killings since a Shia shrine was bombed last week.
Among the dead were many Shia labourers gunned down at a brick factory in a dusk raid on Thursday by a suspected al-Qaeda-linked group. Officials said more bodies may be recovered.
Hours after US and Iraqi troops forced the 50 or so gunmen to withdraw, the Iraqi government imposed a new daytime traffic curfew on Baghdad to avert clashes on the Muslim day of prayer after 10 days of sectarian violence that has killed hundreds.
Iraqi troops and police patrolled the deserted streets, but US forces kept a low profile. American troops' hopes of going home soon have been in the balance since Iraq went to the brink of civil war over the past week.
Embattled Shia Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari warned clerics against "inflammatory" language from pulpits today.
He also rallied Sunni and other leaders into resuming talks on a US-sponsored unity coalition to help stem the violence.
The main minority Sunni bloc ended a boycott it called in protest at reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques following the bombing of a Shia shrine on February 22nd - violence has killed at least 500 people, even by conservative official accounts.
But after Mr al-Jaafari hosted a late meeting last night of the main parties elected to parliament in December, political sources said Sunnis, Kurds and other leaders were still pushing the dominant Shia Alliance to ditch him as premier.
"The negotiations will go on but we still insist on removing Jaafari," said an official in the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front.
Police recovered 21 bodies, mostly of Shia Muslim migrant workers, from the brick factory at Nahrawan, municipal council leader Alaa Abdul Sahab al-Lamy told Reuters. A further four were brought from the local power station, he added.
It was one of the bloodiest incidents of the conflict. Last week, 47 people were killed near Nahrawan after attending what police said was a demonstration calling for Muslim unity.
The rural area southeast of Baghdad, on Iraq's sectarian faultline between the Shia south and Sunni Arab northwest, has seen considerable violence in the past two years. Guerrilla groups operate there in defiance of government and US forces.
Police and Interior Ministry sources in Baghdad said they could not confirm a total death toll but said nine guards at the power station were killed along with many factory workers.
"This was a sectarian attack," Mr Lamy said from a police station where bodies had been brought.
"We understand there are bodies everywhere around the factory, in the fields," one Interior Ministry official in Baghdad said. "The police cannot retrieve them all because they afraid to venture in without more military protection."