Lined up for slaughter: 18 Shi'ite officials, slaughtered by al Qaeda

An al Qaeda executioner pulls his pistol trigger 18 times and a line of innocent men pitches forward one by one, dead or dying.

The victims are Iraqi government officials, shot in retaliation for the alleged rape of a Sunni woman. All Shi'ites, they were selected at random after the government refused to hand over suspects to Al Qaeda.

The slaughter, in an unidentified field, was recorded on a three-minute video broadcast online.

Later another Al Qaeda squad rounded up 14 policemen and hacked them to death in the northeast province of Diyala, again in revenge for the alleged rape.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki denied that the assault ever happened and said it was simply an attempt to blacken the name of police.

On the other side of the religious divide, two Sunni fathers and their four sons were shot dead at pointblank range in a town 12 miles south of Baghdad. Their crime was to attend a peace meeting aimed at bringing both sides together.