News Manager
Milforums News Bot
By Raheem Salman and Alexander Dziadosz BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Shi'ite militiamen machine gunned minority Sunni Muslims in a village mosque on Friday, killing dozens just as Baghdad is trying to build a cross-community government to fight Sunni militants whose rise has alarmed Western powers. A morgue official in Diyala province north of Baghdad said 68 people had been killed in the sectarian attack staged on the Muslim day of prayer. Attacks on mosques are acutely sensitive and 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. Some women who rushed to see the fate of their relatives at the mosque were killed." The bloodbath marks a setback for Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi, from the majority Shi'ite community, who is seeking support from Sunnis and ethnic Kurds to take on the Islamic State insurgency that is threatening to tear Iraq apart.More...