Baghdad hit by wave of attacks

Armed men rampaged through a Sunni enclave in a mainly Shia district of Baghdad on Friday, killing up to 30 people and setting mosques and homes ablaze, police said.

Residents in the Sunni Arab neighbourhood of Hurriya district in northwestern Baghdad also spoke of two dozen or more dead, many of them worshippers.

The assailants attacked four Sunni mosques with rocket-propelled grenades, a security official said.

The onslaught was in apparent reprisal for Thursday’s blasts that killed more than 200 people in Baghdad’s Sadr City, a stronghold of Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.

Related Community Forum Post: More than 140 bodies turn up on Baghdad streets, Attack on Baghdad Shiite Slum Kills 161

[Update] Shiites Burn Six Sunni Worshippers Alive

Shiite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near an Iraqi army post. The soldiers did not intervene, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

The savage revenge attack for Thursday’s slaughter of 215 people in the Shiite Sadr City slum occurred as members of the Mahdi Army militia burned four mosques, and several homes while killing an unknown number of Sunni residents in the once-mixed Hurriyah neighborhood.