Al-Jazeera.com :At least 73 people have been killed after a Shia Muslim armed group opened fired inside an Iraqi Sunni mosque in the country’s eastern Diyala province, medical sources have said.A security source said bodies had been arriving at the hospital in the city of Baquba in Diyala province on Friday.Such sectarian violence could hurt efforts by Iraq’s new prime minister, moderate Shia Haider al-Abadi, to form a government that can unite Iraqis against the Islamic State group, the Sunni rebel group that has seized large parts of the country.Attacks on mosques 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.In July, Shia armed groups executed 15 Sunni Muslims and then hung them from electricity poles in a public square in Baquba, police said.Diyala police officials told the Reuters news agency they had provided Shia militias with names for hit lists so that suspected members of the Islamic State group could be tracked and executed.Iraqi security forces killed more than 255 Sunni prisoners in July in apparent retaliation for killings of Shias by the Islamic State group, according to Human Rights Watch.
