According to medical sources, about 73 people have been killed in Iraq in a Sunni mosque after Shia military men opened fire on them during friday prayers on Friday, August 22, 2014.
A security source in the country’s eastern Diyala province tells Al-Jazeera that bodies from the shooting have been brought into a hospital in Baquba in the Diyala province.
According to the Al-Jazeera report the attack is perceived to be a reprisal for a roadside bomb at a recruitment exercise by the same Shia militia
Al-Jazeera reports:
Such sectarian violence could hurt efforts by Iraq’s new prime minister, moderate Shia Haider al-Abadi, to form a government that can unite Iraqis against the Islamic State group, the Sunni rebel group that has seized large parts of the country.
Attacks on mosques have in the past unleashed a deadly series of revenge killings and counter attacks in Iraq, where violence has returned to the levels of 2006-2007, the peak of a sectarian civil war.
In July, Shia armed groups executed 15 Sunni Muslims and then hung them from electricity poles in a public square in Baquba, police said.
Diyala police officials told the Reuters news agency they had provided Shia militias with names for hit lists so that suspected members of the Islamic State group could be tracked and executed.
Iraqi security forces killed more than 255 Sunni prisoners in July in apparent retaliation for killings of Shias by the Islamic State group, according to Human Rights Watch.
