Suspected Shiite militiamen killed 26 Sunni-Arabs in a weekend rampage of revenge killing in a city north of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said Sunday, raising the toll in the latest sectarian bloodletting there to 43. The U.S. military reported the deaths of a Marine and four soldiers, in statements late Saturday and Sunday. The Marine was killed in combat in Anbar province, the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad on Saturday. Three soldiers died in a roadside bombing Saturday south of Baghdad, and one soldier was killed in a roadside bombing Friday night southwest of the capital. The sectarian killings Saturday in Balad, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad, were in apparent retaliation for the slayings of 17 Shiites, whose decapitated bodies were found in an orchard on the town's outskirts on Friday. Extra police flooded into the city and a curfew was imposed, Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said. Additional security measures were taken in other villages in the predominantly Sunni area, a hotbed of the insurgency battling U.S. and Iraqi forces. In Baghdad Sunday, Interior Ministry undersecretary Hala Shakir Salim survived a roadside bomb attack that killed five others _ three bystanders and two bodyguards, police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani said. Salim, the Interior Ministry finance officer, was attacked in Baghdad's eastern Mustansiriya neighborhood. Her ministry runs Iraqi police. A husband, wife and two of their son's were killed and two daughters-in-law critically wounded Sunday morning when gunmen burst into their home in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad. Police Col. Eid al-Jibouri said the identities of the attackers and their motive were unknown. South of Baghdad, three women and four men were killed in drive-by shootings in the predominantly Shiite village of Wahda on Saturday afternoon, according to provincial police spokesman Lt. Hadi Hassan, the Associated Press reported.
