Thousands of families displaced in Iraq

Adil Abdul-Mahdi, one of the country's two vice presidents, told reporters in the southern city of Najaf that 90 percent of the displaced were Shias like himself and the rest were Sunnis, the minority that held sway under former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Other estimates of the number of displaced families have been lower.

Dr. Salah Abdul-Razzaq, spokesman of the Shia Endowment, a government body that runs Shia religious institutions, put the number of displaced families at 13,750 nationwide, or about 90,000 people.

That includes 25,000 Iraqis who have fled their homes since the bombing of a Shia mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22 triggered a wave of attacks on Sunni mosques and clerics.

Earlier this week, US spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters that US forces had found no "widespread movement" of Shias and Sunnis away from religiously mixed areas, despite reports to the contrary by Iraqi officials.

In the Sunni-dominated town of Jurf al-Sakhar, 65km south of Baghdad and near the mostly Shia city of Musayyib, gunmen kidnapped a Sunni policeman and his brother from their home early Saturday and shot them to death outside, said police Capt. Muthana Khalid.

Four Iraqis were killed in other violence.

In Ghazaliyah in west Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol killed one policeman and wounded two, said police Lt. Mohammed Hanoun. Elsewhere in the capital, a drive-by shooting killed two Iraqi brothers who worked for a foreign contracting company and were walking through the eastern neighbourhood of New Baghdad, said police 1st Lt. Ali Abbas.