A suicide bomber killed at least 10 people and wounded another 25 inside a Shia mosque in Baghdad today, police said.
The bomb attack at the Buratha mosque in northern Baghdad took place as worshippers were gathering for Friday noon prayers. On April 7th, three suicide bombers dressed as women attacked the same mosque, killing at least 71 people.
There were no further details immediately available. In further violence, mortar rounds slammed into a neighbourhood on the northern outskirts of Baghdad, killing at least three people and wounding 16, police said.
Later today, gunmen killed the local head of a Sunni religious group in the Shia city of Basra. Unknown gunmen shot dead Yusif al-Hassan near the mosque where he led prayers in Basra. Hassan was a senior member of the Muslim Scholars Association, a group from the Sunni minority
Attacks on mosques have been on the rise since militants bombed a Shia shrine in the city of Samarra in February, stoking sectarian tensions between majority Shia and once- dominant Sunnis.
Earlier, the US military said army criminal investigators were investigating the deaths last month of three men in the custody of US-led forces in Iraq.
Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, the number two US commander in Iraq, ordered the investigation of the deaths which occurred on or around May 9th in Salahaddin province. "The request for an investigation is the result of soldiers' reported suspicions about the deaths," said a military statement. It did not elaborate.
Today's violence came just two days after the Shia-led Iraqi government launched what it said would be a massive security crackdown in Baghdad that would involve about 40,000 troops designed to root out insurgents.