Ethnic cleansing in Iraq

This headline from this evening breaks my heart:

Gunmen roaming a Baghdad neighborhood on Sunday killed at least 42 unarmed Iraqis as soon as they identified them as Sunnis, emergency police said. Ala’a Makki, a spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party — Iraq’s main Sunni political movement — said the victims included women and children.

This is not, apparently, a killing spree perpetuated by an organized governmental or non-governmental group, but I wonder if qualifies as attempted ethnic cleansing? This reminds me of the Rwandan genocide. In both cases, people were and are being killed because of their group identity. The article continues:

In the Hay al Jihad rampage, gunmen — mostly “young reckless teenagers” — started to pick up Sunni youth and execute them in public, while others went door-to-door looking for Sunni families who stayed behind, Makki said. After warning one Iraqi woman she had 10 seconds to leave, the gunmen killed her and her children, Makki said.

My prayers go out to the families of those killed in these senseless attacks, the other Iraqis living in fear in such a climate, and the military servicemen and women serving Iraq, the US and other nations to preserve peace and promote respect for the rule of law amidst such chaos.