25/07/2013 09:45
Militants kill 14 Shi'ites after checking ID cards in north Iraq
Militants shot dead 14 Shi'ite tanker-drivers after checking their identity papers at a makeshift roadblock on the main route leading north from the Iraqi capital late on Wednesday, Reuters reported, citing police.
The killings took place near Sulaiman Pek, 160 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad, following clashes inside the town between militants and the police and army.
Sunni Islamist militants have been regaining momentum in their insurgency against the Shi'ite-led government in recent months, invigorated by the civil war in neighboring Syria, which has inflamed sectarian tensions in Iraq and the wider region.
"All the victims were Shi'ite tanker drivers who were coming from Baghdad to Kirkuk," Talib Mohammed, the town's mayor, told Reuters by phone. "Militants blocked their way near Sulaiman Pek, checked their IDs and executed them by shooting them in the heads and chest."
Earlier, gunmen ambushed a minibus in western Tikrit, 150 km (95 miles) north of the capital, shooting dead four soldiers who were travelling on the road from Baghdad to Mosul.
Nine policemen were also killed when militants riding on pickup trucks opened fire of a checkpoint in Shura, 50 km (35 miles) south of Mosul, Iraq's third largest city and capital of the Sunni-dominated Nineveh province.
The steady deterioration of security in Iraq was highlighted by a mass jailbreak near the capital on Sunday when around 500 convicts, including senior al Qaeda operatives, escaped after militants attacked two prisons.