Baghdad, Iraq - Masked Shiite gunmen roamed west Baghdad's Jihad neighborhood Sunday, dragging Sunnis from their cars, picking them out on the street and killing them in a rampage that police said killed 41 people in a dramatic escalation of sectarian violence.
Hours later, two car bombs exploded near a Shiite mosque in the city's north, killing 17 people and wounding 38 in what appeared to be a reprisal attack, police said.
Black-clad Shiite militia members staffed checkpoints on roads into most major Shiite neighborhoods to guard against revenge attacks, as scattered clashes occurred across the Iraqi capital.
Sunni leaders expressed outrage over the killings, and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, appealed for calm, warning that the nation stood ``in front of a dangerous precipice.''
Presidential security adviser Wafiq al-Samaraie told Al-Jazeera TV that ``we are at the gates of civil war'' unless ``exceptional measures'' are taken.
A senior government official, Haidar Majid, contested the police figures, saying late Sunday that only nine people died in Jihad. Police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun insisted the figure of 41 was correct -- with 24 bodies taken to Yarmouk hospital and 17 to the city morgue.
Regardless, the brazen attack was likely to further inflame Shiite-Sunni tensions and undermine public confidence in Iraq's new unity government. It also raises new questions about the effectiveness of the Iraqi police and army to curb sectarian violence in the capital.
The trouble started about 10 a.m. when several carloads of gunmen drove into the Jihad area along the main road to Baghdad International Airport, police and witnesses said. The gunmen stopped cars, checked passengers' identification cards and shot dead those with Sunni names.
Masked gunmen wearing black clothes roamed the streets, abducting Sunnis whose bodies were found later scattered throughout the religiously mixed neighborhood, an Interior Ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
U.S. and Iraqi forces sealed off the area, and residents said U.S. troops announced a two-day curfew.
Another police officer, Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq, also said 41 bodies had been collected and taken to hospitals. Some Sunni clerics put the death toll at more than 50 in Jihad, a once-prosperous neighborhood of handsome villas owned by officials of Saddam Hussein's security services.
Residents contacted by telephone told of gunmen systematically rounding up and massacring Sunni men.
A Shiite shopkeeper said he saw heavily armed men pull four people out of a car, blindfold them and force them to stand to the side while they grabbed five others out of a minivan.
``After ten minutes, the gunmen took the nine people to a place a few meters away from the market and opened fire on them,'' Saad Jawad al-Azzawi said.
Wissam Mohammad al-Ani, a Sunni, said three gunmen stopped him as he was walking toward a bus stop and demanded his identification. They let him go after he produced a fake ID with a Shiite name, but they seized two men standing nearby.