Blasts rocked two Sunni mosques in central Iraq Monday, amid fears of renewed sectarian strife following Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shia cleric, the police and medics said.
Blasts rocked two Sunni mosques in central Iraq Monday, amid fears of renewed sectarian strife following Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shia cleric, the police and medics said.
As thousands demonstrated against the Gulf monarchy in Baghdad, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi vowed to track down the attackers, whom he said were attempting to undermine national unity. A man was killed in one of the overnight attacks and a muezzin — the person appointed to recite the Muslim call to prayer — was gunned down in the same region south of Baghdad.
In Hilla, about 80 km from the capital, a police captain said the Ammar bin Yasser mosque in Bakerli neighbourhood was bombed after midnight.
“After we heard the explosion, we went to its source and found that IEDs (improvised explosive devices) had been planted in the mosque,” he said. “Residents said a group of people with military uniforms carried out this operation,” he added.
A witness said he saw gunmen shoot dead a young man displaced from his home town of Ramadi who had been living in the mosque with his family. “The armed men killed one of the displaced who lives in the mosque” with his wife and two children, the resident said on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. A Hilla doctor confirmed the death.
Ramadi is a Sunni city where Iraqi federal forces reclaimed the upper hand a week ago after months of battling the Islamic State group.
The Al-Fateh mosque in a village called Sinjar, just outside Hilla, was also destroyed overnight. A police captain said three or four men in military uniforms were involved in that bombing.
