Iraq conflict: Dozens killed in mosque attack

An attack by suspected Shia militiamen on a Sunni mosque in Iraq’s Diyala province has killed at least 64 people.

Officials say a bomber blew himself up in the mosque during Friday prayers and gunmen fired on fleeing worshippers.

The attack is seen as a blow to government efforts to secure backing from Sunni groups in its battle against Islamic State jihadists. Continue...

Diyala province has seen heavy fighting in recent weeks between IS and Iraqi troops backed by Shia militiamen.

Friday’s attack took place in a village mosque south of the city of Baquba, about 120km (75 miles) from Baghdad.

A security official told AFP news agency that Shia fighters allied with the government had carried out the assault as a reprisal for a bombing that targeted their fighters.

IS has seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria in recent months.

Since 8 August the US has backed Iraqi and Kurdish troops tackling the insurgents by conducting air strikes.

On Thursday, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel described the group as an imminent threat to the US.

“They are beyond just a terrorist group,” he said. “They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess, they are tremendously well-funded. This is beyond anything that we have seen.”

Gen Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said IS was “an organisation that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision and which will eventually have to be defeated”.

He also said that IS fighters could not be defeated without attacking their bases in Syria. The militants, he said, should be confronted “on both sides of what is essentially at this point a non-existent border”.

The warnings came after IS beheaded US journalist James Foley.

Neither Hagel nor Gen Dempsey announced a change in the limited military campaign adopted by Barack Obama, and the US president is unlikely to deepen his involvement in Iraq or Syria, the BBC’s Barbara Plett Usher in Washington reports.

But US officials did not rule out additional action against IS in Iraq or Syria, our correspondent adds.

Meanwhile Britain has said it will not work with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the battle against IS, despite suggestions from a retired top general that it should do so.

UK police and security services are trying to identify the jihadist who appeared in footage of Foley’s killing. Unconfirmed reports suggest the man – who had an English accent – is from London or south-east England.

In the video of Foley’s murder, IS militants threatened to kill another American if the US did not stop its air strikes against the group in northern Iraq.