Indianapolis Police Chief Michael Spears said authorities were seeking Desmond Turner, 28, of Indianapolis, for questioning. Another suspect who was not identified also was being sought.

Deputy Chief Tim Foley said Turner had a history of arrests on charges including assault with bodily fluids and had served more than a year for a gun violation.

Police identified the adult victims as Emma Valdez, 46; her husband, Alberto Covarrubias, 56; Flora Alderran, 22, Valdez' daughter; and Magno Aldarran, 29, Flora's husband.

The children were identified as Luis Aldarran, 5, Flora Alderran's son; and Alberto Covarrubias, 11, and David Covarrubias, 8 or 9.

Officers were called to the home in a residential neighborhood near the Indiana Women's Prison about 10 p.m. when someone reported shots being fired. Officers arrived to find a young woman screaming that her mother had been shot, police Sgt. Steve Staletovich said.

Dozens of police officers blocked off streets in the neighborhood Thursday and were talking to the numerous residents who were watching from nearby yards in a steady rain. A wind chime hung in one window and an iron security door stood open as officers passed in and out.

Police continued to canvass the neighborhood Friday morning.

"We haven't seen anything like this in Indianapolis in recent memory," Deputy Mayor Steve Campbell said. "The IPD folks are saying you have to go back 20, 30 years to find anything like this."

Police said they did not believe the slayings were random but would not discuss a possible motive. They said there was no history of police runs to the home apart from one to check on an alarm.

Foley said it appeared the weapon used was an assault rifle but said it was not necessarily an automatic weapon. There was no indication the slayings were gang-related, he said.

Evan Lewis, whose mother lives next door to the shooting scene, said he was visiting friends who live on the block and went outside when he heard screaming.

Neighbors said the area had declined in recent years and that drug crimes and muggings had become common.

The injured soldiers have been taken to a military hospital nearby, he said.

Pakistan has deployed 80,000 troops on its porous border with Afghanistan to hunt militants who sneaked into tribal regions after Afghanistan's Taliban regime was toppled by US-led forces in late 2001.

Friday's attack at Bacca Khel village was the second suicide bombing in the area within a week.

On Sunday a soldier and a policeman were killed and three paramilitary soldiers were injured when a car exploded at a checkpoint, officials said.

The lone occupant of the vehicle also died in the blast in Datta Khel, 24 kilometers (15 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.

A man claiming to be a spokesman for pro-Taliban militants in the region said it was a suicide attack and threatened further violence against troops in the region.

The terror suspect was taken to a hospital, but his injuries were not life-threatening, police said. Two other people in the house during the raid were treated at the hospital and released. It was not clear what they were treated for.

"An examination of the officers' firearms confirms that a single shot was discharged in circumstances which are currently under investigation," said Deborah Glass of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. She declined to say whether the shooting victim had been armed.

Dimple Hirani, 21, who lives nearby, said she saw "loads of police and loads of vans." The police had special uniforms, gloves and equipment, she said.

Police said raid came after consultations with biochemical experts.

Shopkeeper Salim Mala, 42, said the streets were sealed off when he arrived for work and plain-clothes police and officers wearing protective suits were combing the area.

He described the residents as a mixture of Bengalis, Pakistanis, eastern Europeans and Britons.

During a two-hour sentencing hearing Thursday, prosecutor Maj. Matthew Miller recommended confinement of 12 months and a bad conduct discharge. Cardona's military lawyer, Capt. Kirsten M. Mayer, asked for no prison time and a return to duty.

Miller said abuse of prisoners hurts the war on terrorism by damaging America's image.

"You can win all kinds of battles and end up losing the whole dang war basically for boneheaded decisions and misjudgments," he told the jury.

But Mayer said Miller was exaggerating.

"What we have here is a soldier who let his dog get too close to a detainee, and the dog barked," she told the panel.

Cardona was acquitted of other serious charges he faced, including unlawfully having his dog bite a detainee, conspiring with another dog handler to frighten prisoners into soiling themselves and lying to investigators about the alleged game.

He was convicted of allowing his dog to bark within inches of the face of a kneeling detainee, Kamel Miza'l Nayil, in December 2003 at the request of another soldier who wasn't an interrogator.

Prosecutors portrayed Cardona as part of a small group of corrupt soldiers who enjoyed tormenting prisoners.

But Cardona's civilian defense lawyer, Harvey J. Volzer, said his client did what his training and senior officers demanded: protect fellow soldiers and scare inmates.

Although none of the offenses was alleged to have occurred during interrogations, Cardona's defense team focused on interrogation policies, including three memos issued in a month's time by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

The memos authorized harsher interrogation techniques such as stress positions, sleep deprivation and dogs at Abu Ghraib - but only with written authorization.

The changing policies confounded Col. Thomas M. Pappas, an intelligence officer who assumed the prison's management in late 2003. Pappas was reprimanded last year for approving a request to use dogs in an interrogation without Sanchez' approval - something Pappas testified he believed at the time the policy allowed.

"We were all confused at one time or another," Pappas testified.

"The alliance killed nine rival fighters belonging to Ashi and lost two," said one resident, who saw the engagement unfold but declined to give his name for security concerns.

The new fatalities brought to at least 89 the death toll from the latest round of fighting between the two sides that began last week and have seen the Islamists make steady gains in territory.

Gunmen loyal to Mogadishu's 11 Islamic courts have moved into Balad over the past several days to cut off the alliance's key supply route to the town of Jowhar, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of the capital.

Mogadishu proper was tense but relatively calm on Friday, although the two sides were reinforcing positions even as elders scurried to secure an elusive ceasefire.

"We are contacting both sides involved in the conflict and they say they want peace, but to the contrary, the commanders are preparing themselves for war," said mediator Ali Hassan.

"If this dangerous trend continues, Mogadishu will be very bad and the situation will get out of control," he told AFP.

Witnesses said the factions deployed hundreds of reinforcements and scores of machine gun-mounted pick-ups in volatile areas in and around northern and southern Mogadishu, where the most intense violence has been centered.

And, there were fears that Muslim calls for mass anti-alliance and anti-US demonstrations after Friday's prayers could spark fresh clashes, they said.

The new fatalities in Balad brought the death toll from three months of battles to 327 with more than 1,500 wounded, many of them civilians, and on Friday the two sides traded blame for the violence.

The ARPCT was set up in February with US support to curb the growing influence of Mogadishu's 11 Islamic courts and track down extremists and foreign fighters, including Al-Qaeda members, they are allegedly harboring.

The courts, which have declared a holy war against the alliance, deny the accusations and claim the warlords are fighting for the "enemy of Islam."

"We are loved by the community, but we are also under constant attack by uncouth elements paid by the enemy of Islam," said a senior Islamist official. But ARPCT spokesman Hussein Gutale Raghe blamed the courts for starting the fighting in a bid to impose Sharia law across the war-shattered nation.

"The Islamic court leaders who started this fighting, represent nobody in Somalia," he said. "They are funded and supported by foreign fighters. They are not spreading the message of Allah, but a message of hatred."

Somalia has been without a functioning central authority since 1991 and its largely powerless transitional government has blamed both the alliance and the United States for the fighting.

The United States denies responsibility for the clashes although it has refused to confirm or deny its support for the ARPCT.

But US officials and informed Somali sources have told AFP that Washington has given money to the ARPCT, one of several groups it is working with to curb what it says is a growing threat from radical Islamists in Somalia.

He was granted 80,000-euro bail after a judge denied a prosecution request for him to be jailed.

Gergorin has admitted that in 2004 he sent a French judge a list of alleged account-holders at the Clearstream bank of Luxembourg, sparking a complex scandal which escalated into an affair of state.

He told investigators he had acted without informing Villepin - who has been accused of seeking to exploit the lists to harm his arch-rival Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

The Clearstream letters named a string of French businessmen and politicians including Sarakozy as having received illegal commissions from a defence contract via the bank.

The letters turned out to be bogus and Sarkozy believes he was the victim of a smear campaign ahead of the 2007 presidential elections in which he is a leading candidate.

The investigation to pin down the poison-pen at the origin of the letters has led in recent months to searches at EADS and its subsidiary Airbus, as well as at the French defence ministry and the offices of the secret services.

According to his lawyer, Gergorin refused to reveal the identity of the "secret source" who provided him with the data.

His former colleage at EADS Imad Lahoud - a computer expert widely believed to be the source in question - has been summoned for questioning by the national fraud squad DNIF on Wednesday, sources close to the case said.

Gergorin - who denies having fabricated the lists - says he initially sent them to a French judge probing illegal commissions paid in the sale of French warships to Taiwan in order to ensure they would be fully investigated.

He continued to affirm through his lawyer on Friday that he believed they could be genuine and deserved a more thorough investigation.

"This is a man who remains convinced that the Clearstream affair is a real case, and that the lists correspond to a reality," said his lawyer Paul-Albert Iweins.

The centre-right government has been badly shaken by weeks of claims and counterclaims, fuelled by judicial leaks to the media, exposing a fratricidal battle between its two top figures, Villepin and Sarkozy.

Villepin had to fight off calls for his resignation after being accused of asking a spy chief - on President Jacques Chirac's orders - to secretly check whether the claims against Sarkozy were true. Both Chirac and Villepin deny the accusation.

Retired spymaster Philippe Rondot - whose leaked testimony has implicated both the president and prime minister - was escorted by police before investigating magistrates for further questioning last week but refused to answer their questions.