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Abu Baraa said that far from being an insurgent, his dead brother Najah al-Rassam, 37, had worked for the interior ministry’s Maghaweer special police force. This has led to speculation in the neighbourhood that the Badr Brigade wants to take over the special police and needed to get rid of a Sunni member. But nobody really knows why their street was selected by the death squad.

Abu Baraa was sleeping on the roof to avoid the stifling indoor heat of the summer night when the raid began.

“They dragged my brother Najah out of his bed, ignoring the pleas and cries of his wife,” he said. The couple had been married only three months.

A police commander is alleged to have asked a masked Badr representative whether Najah was “the wanted man”. The masked man replied: “Yes, sir, this is him.” A nod from the commander was apparently enough to ensure that Najah was hauled off. “This is state terrorism,” said Abu Baraa.

Major-General Adnan Thabit, commander of the interior ministry’s special forces, denied any government role in the slayings. He said fighters were dressing in police uniforms to inflame sectarian divisions.

Imad Hussam al-Deen, 42, a taxi driver and father of four, was also rounded up that day. His son, who refused to give his name, said his family had already left the neighbourhood.

“We have lost both my father and the sense of protection he extended to us,” he said. “God willing, I will avenge the death of my father and kill those bastards whose deeds have wiped the smiles from the faces of my mother, brothers and sisters.”

Just as Sunnis have fled a largely Shi’ite district, so many Shi’ites have left their homes in Sunni areas of Baghdad and in predominantly Sunni towns such as Ramadi, Falluja and Latafiya. The number is believed to be in the thousands.

Abu Haidar, a Shi’ite, lived until recently in a large house in the mainly Sunni Baghdad district of al-Doura. Shortly after four Shi’ite neighbours were killed, Abu Haidar, 45, who is married to a Sunni, received a warning from his wife’s family to leave the area because he had been targeted by insurgents.

He took his wife and six children and moved into a small house belonging to his in-laws.

“In the 1970s no one talked about Shi’ites or Sunnis — I don’t even think my father knew which sect he belonged to. In the 1980s, people became more aware of their sects as a result of the Iran-Iraq war. In the 1990s a person’s sect became more of an issue but in 2005 it all culminated in sectarian killings,” he lamented.

The bodies of at least 539 people who died violently have been found since April, according to a count by the Associated Press agency.

Shi’ites are now paying the highest price in blood. Last month Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Sunni leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, declared all-out war on them. But countless Sunnis are also terrified of death squads. The alleged acquiescence of the Shi’ite-dominated police has persuaded many to move into communities where they can be protected by their own.

For most of the families of Iskan’s 22 dead, however, leaving is out of the question because they are related to Shi’ites. Instead, they held a meeting with the Mahdi army of the Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and set up an armed force of their own to defend themselves against future raids.

The killings have deepened the Sunni-Shi’ite divide at a time when the country is already split over its proposed constitution. The minority Sunnis are being urged by their leaders to vote against it next weekend, arguing that it will lead to further fragmentation.

Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, announced yesterday that he would go to Iraq after the referendum in an attempt to reconcile the two communities. “The situation is so tense,” he said. “A civil war could erupt at any moment.”

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