More than 40 people are missing after armed kidnappers today ambushed mini-buses travelling to Baghdad on a main road north of the Iraqi capital, police in the city of Tikrit said.
An Iraqi spokesman for the Joint Coordination Centre of the Iraqi police and US forces in the mainly Sunni Arab province of Salahaddin said "about 42" people were missing after the incident near Tarmiya, 30 km (20 miles) north of Baghdad.
The gunmen set up a fake checkpoint and stopped vehicles to ask drivers if they came from the Shi'ite villages of Balad and Dujail, the spokesman said.
In what has become a grim feature of the sectarian violence gripping Iraq, gunmen select their victims at random checkpoints based on their religious denomination. Most appear dead later.
Last week, fierce clashes broke out in Balad, 80 km north of the capital, involving Iraqi police that blocked Iraq's main highway north from Baghdad to Mosul and the Turkish border.
Dujail is the Shi'ite village where Saddam Hussein survived an assassination attempt in 1982, prompting a government crackdown for which the toppled leader has been tried. He is expecting to hear a possible death sentence verdict on November 5th.
Earlier a suicide car bomber struck a wedding party in Baghdad this afternoon, killing four children and seven adults, and wounding 21 others, police reported.
The bomber drove an explosives-rigged sedan into a crowd of Shi'ite celebrants outside the bride's home in the north-eastern Shaab neighbourhood, police Lt Ahmed Mohamed said.
Weddings and funerals are often public events in Iraq, making them relatively easy targets for suicide bombers hoping to spark reprisal attacks from Sunnis and push Iraq into a full-blown civil war.
Five other children were among those hospitalised for their injuries, said Dr Qasim al-Suweadi of the nearby al-Sadr hospital.