According to Hussein, the police official, militiamen rampaged through the district, setting fire to several homes in addition to the four mosques that were bombed and burned.

Special coverage: Iraq violence continues
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Some residents claimed that the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to radical anti-American Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has begun kidnapping and holding Sunni hostages in order to slaughter them at funerals of Shi'ite victims of Baghdad's sectarian violence.

Such claims cannot be verified but speak to the deep fear that grips Baghdad, where retaliation has become a part of daily life.

In the past year, thousands of bodies have been found dumped across Baghdad and other cities in central Iraq, victims who were tortured, then shot to death, according to police. The suspected militia killers often have used electric drills on their captives' bodies before killing them. The bodies are frequently decapitated.

Burning victims alive, however, introduced a new method of brutality that seemed likely to be reciprocated by the other sect as the Shi'ites and Sunnis continue killing one another in unprecedented numbers. The attack, which came despite a curfew in Baghdad, capped a day in which at least 87 people were killed or found dead in sectarian violence across Iraq.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni organization in Iraq, said even more Sunni victims were killed. It claimed a total of 18 people had died in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque.

The extreme violence continued to tear at the Iraq's social fabric even after the government had banned pedestrians and cars from the streets and closed the international airport until further notice in anticipation of a storm of retaliation for the five bombings and two mortar rounds that killed 215 in Sadr City on Thursday.

The airport closure forced Talabani to delay his planned Saturday departure for Tehran for meetings with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian leader also invited Syrian President Bashar Assad, but it now appeared he would not attend.

The chaos also cast a shadow over the Amman, Jordan, summit next week between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Bush.

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