Just another day in Bush/Lieberman War

Stay the course Joe?

Gunmen killed nine members of two Shi'ite families in Baghdad on Sunday a day after militias raided a mixed neighborhood and forced dozens of Sunni families to flee in a serious escalation of sectarian violence.

Officials and relatives of the victims said about 30 gunmen stormed a home in a mostly Sunni area in southwestern Baghdad and killed five brothers from one family after separating them from the women. A father and three sons from another family, all of them policemen, were also killed.

"The gunmen broke into the house. They locked the mother and the sisters in one room and killed the five brothers in another room," a cousin, who identified himself as Haider, told Reuters. Haider, who spoke to the women after the attack, said the brothers were all Shi'ites.

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf confirmed the attack in Jihad neighborhood and said he was unaware of the victims' sectarian affiliation. A source at Yarmouk hospital said all victims were Shi'ites.

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.

Don't look at me, I voted for Lamont.