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Two mosques bombed in Iraq

Hilla, Iraq - In Hilla, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the capital, a police officer said the Ammar bin Yasser mosque in Bakerli neighbourhood was bombed after midnight.

Blasts rocked two mosques in central Iraq on Monday, amid fears of renewed sectarian strife following Saudi Arabia's recent executions, police and medics said.

Groups of men wearing military uniforms detonated explosives at two mosques overnight in the Hilla region, south of Baghdad, and a muezzin was shot dead near his home in Iskandariyah, the sources said.

In Hilla, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the capital, a police officer said the Ammar bin Yasser mosque in Bakerli neighbourhood was bombed after midnight.

"After we heard the explosion, we went to its source and found that IEDs (improvised explosive devices) had been planted in the mosque," the captain said.

"Residents said a group of people with military uniforms carried out this operation," he said, adding that 10 houses were also damaged.

The Al Fateh mosque in a village called Sinjar, just outside Hilla, was also damaged in similar circumstances.

The police captain said three or four men in military uniforms were involved that bombing.

"They took advantage of the cold weather, there was nobody outside," he said.

A medical source in Hilla said three people were wounded in the explosions.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts, nor for the killing near the town of Iskandariyah, about 40 kilometres south of Baghdad.

A local councillor identified the slain muezzin of the Mohammed Abdallah Jabbouri mosque in Haswa as Taha Al Juburi.

"He was ambushed by unknown gunmen near his house," a source in Iskandariyah police said.

A doctor also confirmed his death.

• MENA