Families Flee Iraqi River Towns On 4th Day of Sectarian Warfare

The total number of victims received by Balad's hospital morgue held steady at 80 on Monday, Badawi said. Members of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia were blocking Sunni families from picking up more of their dead from the streets, he said.

The American military had recorded 57 killings in Balad, Lt. Col. Christopher C. Garver, a military spokesman, said in Baghdad.

On Monday, Sunni families fleeing Balad described Shiite militias going door-to-door, giving people two hours to clear out.

A police officer in Duluiyah, Capt. Qaid al-Azawi, accused American forces of standing by in Balad while militiamen in police cars and police uniforms slaughtered Sunnis. Americans did act, however, in Duluiyah, arresting three local police officers whom they suspected of fighting with insurgents against the militias, Azawi said.

Garver, the spokesman in Baghdad, said he had no information on these specific reports. "We're providing assistance where we see criminal behavior, such as violence and killing," he said.

Police officials said Balad had calmed by nightfall with the deployment of large numbers of Iraqi army troops, who are seen as more neutral than forces of the Shiite-dominated police.

Meanwhile, clashes between Iraqi and foreign members of al-Qaeda in Iraq signaled a possible split in the foreign-led Sunni insurgent group over its leaders' declaration Sunday of a separate, Sunni-led Islamic emirate in nine provinces of Iraq.

The hospital in Ramadi, a western city badly battered by years of fighting between American forces and Sunni insurgents, by late Monday had received the bodies of 13 insurgents killed in the internal clashes, including a top local leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to Saad Naji, a physician.

A mid-ranking Iraqi official of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Ma'an al-Ani, said scores of Iraqi members of Iraq's most feared Sunni insurgent group had broken away, spurred by unhappiness at Sunday's declaration. Creation of a separate Sunni state would only "tear the country apart . . . and divert from the main goal, which is getting Americans out," Ani said.

In other violence Monday, 11 people were killed when assailants used car bombs to attack the funeral of a Shiite policeman in Baghdad, the Interior Ministry said.

Two American soldiers were killed in fighting north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said, bringing to 12 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since Friday, an unusually high toll. Attacks have killed more than 50 American troops in October, putting the month on track to be one of the bloodiest of the war for U.S. forces.

Execution-style shootings claim the great majority of victims in Baghdad, where scores of bodies are dumped each day. Monday's victims included the brother of the chief prosecutor in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial, who was shot to death in front of his wife at his home.

Aldin reported from Tikrit. Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad, Saad Sarhan in Najaf and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.