Gunmen set fire to four houses on Friday after they forced dwellers to leave their homes in a flare- up of sectarian conflict in a neighborhood in northern Baghdad, a well-informed police source said.

"Militiamen set fire to four houses from which dwellers had been forced to move in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Hurriyah," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Fire engines rushed to the scene to put out the fires but were attacked by gunmen to prevent them.

Four people were wounded in the turmoil, the source said, without elaborating on the identities of the injured.

Since the Feb. 22 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, some 120 km north of Baghdad, Iraq has been engulfed in tit-for- tat Shiite-Sunni violence that has reporedly killed thousands.

Source: Xinhua