Baghdad, Iraq ? Gunmen attacked Shiite women picking vegetables Friday in a field outside the capital, killing six adults and two young girls and kidnapping two teenagers. It was one of the deadliest assaults specifically targeting women in Iraq’s monthslong wave of sectarian violence.

Police said they suspected the gunmen were Sunnis seeking to intimidate Shiites into fleeing the area south of Baghdad.

Previous major attacks in Iraq have killed many women and men together, and at times individual women have been shot or kidnapped. But rarely have large groups of women been attacked.

Baghdad has been the epicenter of violence for months. The city has averaged 36 attacks a day during the past three weeks, an increase of nearly 30 percent from the preceding seven weeks and 60 percent higher than from mid-March to mid-June, according to U.S. military figures.

In another sign of sectarian bloodshed, police in Duluiyah north of Baghdad found 14 beheaded bodies thought to be from a group of 17 workers kidnapped by gunmen Thursday while traveling home to the mostly Shiite town of Balad. There was no word on the other abductees.