Over 60 Sunni Muslims are dead after a group of armed Shiite Muslims open fired at a mosque in Iraq on Friday.
The militiamen barged into the Imam Wais village mosque in the Diyala province and discharged their weapons on the 150 Sunnis worshiping inside, local lawmaker Nahida al-Dayani told Reuters. A total of 68 worshipers were killed in the latest wave of sectarian attacks and revenge attacks between Shiites and Sunnis.
"It is a new massacre," Dayani, who is Sunni, told Reuters. "Sectarian militias entered and opened fire at worshippers. Most mosques have no security. Some of the victims were from one family. Some women who rushed to see the fate of their relatives at the mosque were killed."
Dayani said the massacre was a revenge attack for three roadside bombings launched earlier Friday in an attempt to kill a local Shiite tribe leader, The New York Times reported. Five were killed in the bombings but the leader survived.
"If one Shiite is killed, from the security forces or the militias, they try to kill 10 Sunnis from the same area," Dayani told the newspaper. "This is not the first time."
The attack comes at a time of increased sectarian violence in Iraq marked by the rise of the Islamic State, a mostly Sunni militant group that has swept across northern Iraq in a holy war to establish a caliphate. The group, also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), considers Shiite Muslims to be against God.
A town of 17,000 Shiites in central Iraq is currently under siege by the jihadists, who have stationed snipers around the town to ensure no one leaves, The NY Times reported.
The threat of a humanitarian crisis in Amerli town, like the recent one where ethnic Yazidis were trapped in the Sinjar Mountains, has lawmakers calling for the U.S. to provide humanitarian aid.
"Why did they hit ISIS in Sinjar but not Amerili?" Fawzi Akram Tarzi, of the Iraqi Parliament, told the newspaper. "We want the international community to deal with all Iraqi citizens in the same way."
