Baghdad: Some 29 people, 20 of them women, were killed on Saturday evening in an apartment building in eastern Baghdad by gunmen wearing a mix of plain clothes and camouflage, a police officer and a hospital official said.
The police officer told Reuters that he had witnessed a gruesome scene at the building in the neighbourhood of Zayouna:
"When we walked up the stairs, we saw a couple of women`s bodies and blood streaming down the stairs.
We entered a flat and found bodies everywhere, some lying on the sofa, some on the ground, and one woman who apparently had tried to hide in a cupboard in the kitchen shot to death there."
Shi`ite militias have been accused by locals of carrying out killings of women branded as prostitutes in that district of the capital, though there was no way to immediately confirm who was responsible for the attack.
