Sunni attack kills dozens in Iraqi mosque

At least 73 people were killed when a suicide bomber broke into an Iraqi Sunni mosque and a Shia Muslim militia opened fire inside in the country's eastern Diyala province on Friday, Iraqi security sources said.

An army officer and a police officer said a suicide bomber first broke into the Musab bin Omair Mosque in Imam Wais village in Diyala province, some 75 miles northeast of Baghdad, detonating his explosives before gunmen rushed in and opened fire on worshippers.

The officials said that fighters with the Islamic State group have been trying to convince members of two prominent local Sunni tribes — the Oal-Waisi and al-Jabour — to join them, but they have thus far refused.

Two medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to brief the media.

The towns of Jalula and al-Saadiyah have recently fallen to the Islamic State group but Imam Wais is thus far in government control. Such sectarian violence could hurt efforts by Iraq's new Shia prime minister, moderate Haider al-Abadi, to form a government that can unite Iraqis against Islamic State, the Sunni fighters who have seized large parts of the country. The crisis has worsened since June as the group swept through new towns in the north, killing dozens of people and displacing hundreds of thousands, mainly members of the minority Christian and Yazidi religious communities.

Ambulances transported the bodies to the town of Baquba, the main town in Diyala province, where Iranian-trained Shia militias are powerful and act with impunity.

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 and 2007, the peak of a sectarian civil war.

Iraqi Shia militia forces executed 15 Sunni Muslims and then hung them from electricity poles in a public square in Baquba in July, police said.

Diyala police officials told Reuters they had provided Shia militias with names for hit lists so that suspected members of Islamic State could be tracked and executed.

Wire services