A middle-aged man in a bloodstained dishdasha, the traditional Arab robe, wandered aimlessly, hitting his face with his hands in grief. Residents said his six children were crushed to death when his house collapsed.

"This is terrorism against the whole nation," said Ali al-Sayedi, a municipal council member.

A pedestrian bridge, ripped off its mooring at one end, had crushed a car underneath. One rocket had punched a hole in the roof of a house exposing the steel rod reinforcements inside. Store fronts were blasted inward, blowing away metal shutters.

The attack in Zafraniyah was the deadliest since about 12,000 US and Iraqi troop reinforcements were sent to the capital this month to curb a surge in sectarian violence that the

United Nations has estimated killed nearly 6,000 Iraqis in May and June.

The complex style of the assault was similar to a July 27 attack of mortars, rockets and car bombs on another mostly Shiite district, Karradah, which killed 31 people. Police said the missiles that struck Karradah also were fired from Dora.

The multiple attacks were part of the grisly pattern of Sunni-Shiite violence that American officials consider the greatest threat to Iraq's stability more than three years after the US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein's regime.

On Sunday, US and Iraqi soldiers began searching more than 4,000 homes in the Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah in Baghdad while conducting a similar operation simultaneously in the Shiite district of Shula, the US command said.

"The operations are designed to reduce the level of murders, kidnappings, assassinations, terrorism and sectarian violence in northwest Baghdad and to reinforce the Iraqi government's control," a statement by the U.S. command said.

Elsewhere, unidentified gunmen killed Col. Mahjoub Khalaf Ghulam, a commander in the Iraqi oil protection force, in Tikrit, about 80 miles north of Baghdad, police said. More than 250 Oil Ministry officials, workers and oil security personnel have been assassinated since the fall of Saddam.

Also Sunday, a bomb blew up in a Shiite shrine near the northern city of Baqouba but there were no casualties. However, six people were killed in shootings and bombings on Monday across Iraq, including three blacksmiths who were shot to death by gunmen in the northern city of Mosul.