Scores dead in attack on Sunni mosque in Iraq

At least 73 people have been killed after a Shia Muslim armed group opened fired inside an Iraqi Sunni mosque in the country's eastern Diyala province, medical sources have said, Al Jazeera reports. 

A security source said bodies had been arriving at the hospital in the city of Baquba in Diyala province on Friday.

Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf, reporting from Erbil, said that according to local sources, the attack could have been in retaliation for a roadside bomb attack at a recruitment event organised by the same militia.

Such sectarian violence could hurt efforts by Iraq's new prime minister, moderate Shia Haider al-Abadi, to form a government that can unite Iraqis against the Islamic State group, the Sunni rebel group that has seized large parts of the country.

Attacks on mosques have in the past unleashed a deadly series of revenge killings and counter attacks in Iraq, where violence has returned to the levels of 2006-2007, the peak of a sectarian civil war.