(Updates with death toll, quotes from witnesses)

By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Gunmen rampaged through a Sunni enclave in a mainly Shi'ite district of Baghdad on Friday, killing up to 30 people and setting mosques and homes ablaze, police said, in a sharp escalation of sectarian violence.

Residents in the Sunni Arab neighbourhood of Hurriya district in northwestern Baghdad also spoke of two dozen or more dead, many of them worshippers killed when black-clad gunmen attacked four mosques with rocket-propelled grenades.

The attacks were in apparent reprisal for blasts that killed more than 200 people in the eastern Baghdad district of Sadr City, a stronghold of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, who typically wear black clothing.

Imad al-Din al-Hashemi, a university professor visiting Baghdad, said he was in the Nida Allah mosque when it was attacked during Friday prayers and 14 people were killed.

"It was attacked by RPGs and many people were killed and wounded. When the gunmen moved on to attack another mosque we evacuated the wounded," he told Reuters.

He said about 10 people were killed at the nearby Ahbab Mustafa mosque. Homes were set on fire, killing at least two children aged eight and 14 and a woman who died of smoke inhalation.

"I went to help one of the houses that was attacked. Two women and a man were wounded. I took away the women but when I went back to fetch the man he had been shot in the head and was dead," he said.

He said the Iraqi military were slow to come to the aid of residents, but by Friday evening the neighbourhood was reported to be calm with Iraqi troops patrolling the area.

A civil servant who declined to be identified said he saw an attack by gunmen on a mosque close to his home.

"We heard blasts and went outside. I saw gunmen fire rockets at the al-Muheiman mosque. Others were firing heavy machine guns," he said. "From the roof of my house we saw more than 10 houses ablaze."

Sadr appealed for unity in a statement on Thursday, while Iraqi leaders appeared on television urging calm.

But a source at police headquarters said 30 people were killed and 48 wounded in the Hurriya violence.

After Thursday's carnage, the Iraqi authorities slapped an indefinite curfew on the capital in a bid to prevent revenge attacks, which officials fear will fuel a cycle of tit-for-tat killings that threatens to plunge Iraq into civil war.

The Interior Ministry confirmed the attacks in Hurriya but said they had no casualty figures. One resident also spoke of up to 30 people killed.

Sectarian violence has surged since the February bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a holy Shi'ite shrine. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's six-month-old government has struggled to contain the bloodshed despite a major crackdown in the capital and a series of national reconciliation initiatives.

The United Nations said in a report on Wednesday that the number of Iraqi deaths had reached a new high and that 100,000 people were fleeing the country each month to escape violence that has increasingly split neighbourhoods on sectarian lines. (Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed)

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