Eurasia Press & News
Militants targeted a Sunni mosque in a province next to the Iraqi capital during Friday prayers, killing at least 46 people and wounding over 50 as members of the Islamic State group continue to push through the area, officials 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 120 km 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 authorised to brief the media. The towns of Jalula and Al-Saadiyah have recently fallen to militants with the Islamic State group but Imam Wais is thus far in government control.
Since early this year, Iraq has been facing an onslaught by the Islamic State group and allied Sunni militants across much of the country’s north and west. The crisis has worsened since June as the militant fighters 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.
