Gunmen wearing Iraqi military uniforms raided homes in a Sunni village south of Baghdad, killing at least 24 people, including five women, in execution-style attacks, officials said yesterday.

An army official said many of the victims were brutalised "beyond recognition".

At least seven people were found alive, bound with handcuffs, said Baghdad's security spokesman, Maj Gen Qassim al-Moussawi. In the hours after the shootings, Iraqi officials cordoned off the area to search for suspects and helicopters swarmed overhead.

"The area has many orchards and streams, so it is difficult to secure, but we are investigating," al-Moussawi said. He said the killings bore "an obvious al-Qaeda hallmark".

Many of the dead were members of local Sahwa, or Awakening Councils ? one of several names for the Sunni fighters who changed the course of the war when they revolted against al-Qaeda in Iraq and joined the Americans in late 2006 and 2007, officials said. The fighters also are known as Sons of Iraq.

A senior Iraqi army official said the bodies were handcuffed and had been sprayed up and down with machine-gun fire.

He said some of the bodies were left "beyond recognition".

Mustafa Kamel, a Sahwa leader south of Baghdad, said the attack happened late on Friday in a village in the Arab Jabour area, about 15 miles south of Baghdad. Arab Jabour is a collection of industrial zones, villages and palm and citrus groves in the Sunni belt around Baghdad's southern doorstep.

An official at Iraq's Interior Ministry confirmed the attack and said the victims were 20 men and five women and that the attackers were in military uniform.

Al-Moussawi said 24 people were confirmed dead, although other officials put the toll at 25.

Many of the Sons of Iraq were former insurgents who later teamed up with the Americans against al-Qaeda in Iraq. The move, known as the Awakening, was credited - along with the surge of tens of thousands of US troops - in helping quell the violence.

But the question of what to do with these nearly 100,000 people in the long-term remains. The US handed over control last year of the Awakening Councils to Iraq.