Death toll in Iraq sectarian fighting rises to 91; no end to violence in sight

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Sunni Muslims fled across the Tigris River on Monday, trying to escape a four-day rampage of sectarian fighting in their Shiite-dominated home city of Balad north of Baghdad. At least 91 people have died -- all but 17 of them Sunnis.\nAlso Monday, staggered car bombs hit a Shiite funeral in Baghdad, killing 15 people -- mourners as well as rescuers who arrived before the second explosion. It was the deadliest attack in violence around the country Monday that claimed at least 60 lives.\nThe government and its police and armed forces appeared unable or unwilling to stop the bloodshed that may set the standard for the building inter-communal conflict should it spread further and the pace hasten, which appeared likely.\nSunnis in Balad said militiamen went door to door, giving them two hours to clear out of their homes, and one police officer said the bodies of the city's Sunni minority lay unclaimed in the streets.\nMohamed Ali Hamid, a 35-year-old Sunni taxi driver, said he walked for two hours with 20 family members Sunday to reach the nearby Sunni town of Duluiyah. Shiite militiamen accompanied by police gave them just two hours to leave Sunday, he said.\n"They said, 'You are Sunnis and have no place here at all,'" Hamid said. "They burned everything related to Sunnis, and we were forced to leave everything behind," he said by phone from a police station where he had been taken after Duluiyah law enforcement picked the group up along the highway.