Fear grips Hawr Rajab after massacre of villagers

Baghdad: It was after dark when the men in uniform entered the first home. There they found three men and shot them using silencers. Then they stole the victims' van and drove to the next house and killed again. Within an hour, the gunmen had methodically made their way through four homes and killed 25 people. Their work done, they left on foot Friday evening, disappearing into the palm trees and orange groves of the Hawr Rajab district south of Baghdad.

Many of the victims had been part of the US-backed Awakening movement, Sunni Arab paramilitary groups that took a stand against the militant group Al Qaida in Iraq and played a key role in the 2007 American troop buildup to fight the insurgency. But three women and two girls were also among the dead, according to accounts from residents and security officials.

On Saturday, people in the isolated villages south of the capital locked themselves in their homes after the attack, which echoed the darkest days of civil war and raised concern that the country's deadlock over forming a government could provoke a renewal of sectarian bloodshed.

Some Iraqi security officers, US military personnel and Western officials are expressing concern that Al Qaida in Iraq could re-establish itself and cause havoc before the next government is formed. The attack on Friday appeared to be aimed at intimidating the Sunni population. Residents of Hawr Rajab said the attackers, wearing American-style military uniforms, arrived in the afternoon. They seized an abandoned home, and one of the men, pretending to be an interpreter, told villagers in a mix of English and Arabic that the "American soldiers" were on a mission.

Some witnesses said the men's guns had laser pointers. The carnage reminded some of the arbitrary killings during the rule of Al Qaida in Iraq in the so-called Baghdad belt. For others, the events conjured up memories of uniformed Shiite militiamen busting down doors and dragging away Sunni men. "All of the people here are terrified. We don't know what's going to happen at night. We are going to lock our doors and stay inside. Only God can help us," Hawr Rajab resident Hadi Hamed Abbas said. "I am lost and I don't know who to accuse."