A Plague on the Nation

Gunmen broke into two Shiite homes and killed 21 men in front of their relatives, police said Saturday, as Vice President Dick Cheney sought Saudi Arabia's help in calming Iraq after an especially violent week.

The capital remained under a 24-hour curfew two days after suspected Sunni insurgents killed 215 people in Baghdad's main Shiite district with a combination of bombs and mortars.

Another 87 people were killed or found dead in sectarian violence across Iraq Friday. The chaos cast a shadow over the summit next week between Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Bush in Amman, Jordan.

Politicians loyal to radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have threatened to boycott parliament and the Cabinet if al-Maliki goes ahead with the meeting. The political bloc, known as Sadrists, is a mainstay of support for al-Maliki.

Sadrist lawmaker Qusai Abdul-Wahab blamed U.S. forces for Thursday's attack in Sadr City because they failed to provide security.

In Diyala province, a hotbed of Iraq's Sunni-Arab insurgency, gunmen raided two Shiite homes Friday night. The attack targeted members of the al-Sawed Shiite tribe in the village of Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, according to a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his own security, as officials often do in the increasingly volatile province.

Earlier in the day, rampaging militiamen burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the capital's mostly Shia neighborhood of Hurriyah. Iraqi soldiers at a nearby army post failed to intervene in the assault by suspected members of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia or subsequent attacks that killed a total of 25 Sunnis, including women and children, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

Cheney arrived Saturday in Saudi Arabia for talks with King Abdullah, apparently seeking the Sunni royal family's influence and tribal connections to calm Iraq. The vice president was not planning additional stops in the region.

Meanwhile, funeral processions were held Saturday for a second day for the victim's of Thursday's attack. An official from al-Sadr's main office in Sadr City visited hospitals treating some of the 257 people who were wounded in the attack, and he gave them small donations of cash in envelopes.

Also Saturday, U.S. and Iraqi forces killed 22 insurgents and an Iraqi civilian, and destroyed a factory being used to make roadside bombs, during several raids north of Baghdad.

During three of the coalition raids, soldiers killed 10 insurgents near the city of Taji, which is 12 miles north of Baghdad and home to a major U.S. air base. An Iraqi teenage boy also was killed and a pregnant Iraqi woman was wounded in the crossfire, the military said.

U.S. aircraft were called in to destroy a factory being used to make roadside bombs, and soldiers searching the area also found hidden caches of rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, anti-aircraft weapons and pipe bombs.

Many U.S. soldiers are killed and wounded in Iraq by powerful roadside bombs used by insurgents.

"Coalition forces strive to mitigate risks to civilians while in pursuit of terrorists. It is always a shame when terrorists hide among civilian women and children, putting them in harm's way," the U.S. military said.

In another area north of Baghdad, coalition forces attacked three vehicles carrying 12 insurgents, including one they were searching for because he allegedly was involved in the manufacture of car bombs, the coalition said.

The soldiers opened fire on the cars when they ignored warning shots, and all the militants were killed, the military said. The coalition declined to give the exact location of the incident.