21 EXECUTED; Students pulled off bus and shot.

Byline: By JAN DISLEY

TWENTY-one people including a dozen students were dragged off buses and shot dead as violence raged across Iraq yesterday.

Gunmen stopped them at a makeshift checkpoint northeast of Baghdad before killing them "execution-style". Some fled but were gunned down, sources said.

Shocking photographs showed six men shot in the chest, including one old man and five young men. A police official said: "They dragged them out one by one and executed them."

The massacre is one of the worst sectarian atrocities to hit Iraq in recent weeks. Four Sunni Arabs were spared.

The Shia and Kurd victims were bound for Baqouba, where the students were due to sit end of term exams.

They were hit on the outskirts of the Diyala province - a region which has become sectarian powder keg with attacks on Sunni, Arab and Shia Shrines.

In the south, a Sunni group accused security forces in Basra of killing 12 worshippers in a mosque.

But police said they had returned fire and shot dead nine terrorists.

The stand-off began when officers stormed four Sunni mosques on Saturday night. Hours earlier a suicide car bomber blew himself up in a market, killing 28 people and wounding 62.

Basra police said they surrounded the al-Arab mosque after information militants had holed up inside. Gunmen then opened fire from within, they said.

Meanwhile, in a fresh political setback, leaders appeared deadlocked on naming interior and defence ministers - seen as vital to achieving stability.

[e-mail]

CAPTION(S):

ANGUISH: Prayers for a car bomb victim, left, as men cry for their brother who was among those executed. Soldier inspects Basra mosque damage, right