BAGHDAD, May 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi met Thursday with Iraq's top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani amid escalation of bloodshed and sectarian tension among Iraqi factions.

    Kharazi, also a Shiite, met the Iranian-born Shiite cleric for 30 minutes in the latter's heavily guarded house in Najaf, some 160km south of Baghdad, media reports said.

    But Kharazi refused to meet the media after the meeting.

    Kharazi arrived in Iraq on Tuesday and he has met Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and President Jalal Talabani in the past two days.

    Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites have been trading killings intensively during recent days in the war-torn country, rasing concerns that escalation of sectarian tension could erupt into civil war.

    The Association of Muslim Scholar on Wednesday openly accused the military wing of a main Shiite party of assassinating Sunni clerics.

    "The party that are behind the campaign of killing of preachers of mosques and worshippers are the Badr Brigade, and I take responsibility for what I am saying," Harith al-Dhari, head of the leading Sunni group, told reporters in a news conference.

    "Badr forces are responsible for the escalating tensions," he said.

    Hassan Nuaimi, a senior member of the association, was found killed in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday and his body was mutilated after he was detained by Iraqi security forces.

    The incident came a day after the Sunni group accused the predominately Shiite government of "state terrorism" and turning a blind eye to the killings of Sunnis.

    Dhari's comments came after hundreds of angry Sunnis attended Nuaimi's funeral on Wednesday and condemned the Iraqi government.

    Meanwhile, the association also accused the Iraqi security forces, which mostly formed by Badr Brigade militias taking part in the new government, of killing 14 Sunnis including three imams in western Baghdad recently.

    Soldiers and police commandos "arrested imams and guards in Baghdad's mosques, tortured and killed them, then their bodies were found in a garbage dump in the Shaab district" west of the capital, the Sunni association said.

    The leading Sunni party called for a three-day closure of Sunni mosques in protest at the killings and warned that Sunnis would not keep silent.

    Badr Brigade, the militia of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the influential Shiite political party which won January's elections in a Shiite coalition, has officially turned into a political organization and changed its name into Badr Organization. But many Iraqis believe that it is still militia.

    A senior Badr official, Hadi al-Amiri, denied the accusations.

    "I consider these comments from Dhari to be irresponsible and only serve to pour fuel on the flames," he said.

    Iraq's interior minister, a Shiite, and defense minister, a Sunni, have also denied the accusations. Enditem