Sunni mosques bombed and muezzin killed in Iraqi violence

Blasts rocked two Sunni mosques in central Iraq on Monday, amid fears of renewed sectarian strife following Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shia cleric, police and medics said.

Groups of men wearing military uniforms detonated explosives at two Sunni mosques overnight in the Hilla region, south of Baghdad, and a muezzin - the person appointed to recite the Muslim call to prayer - was shot dead near his home in Iskandariyah, the sources said.

In Hilla, about 80 kilometres south of 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 by the explosion.

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.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the bombings, but a tweet by Haider al-Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, suggests that Iraqi security forces believe the Islamic State (IS) group may be a possible perpetrator.

"We ordered Babil operations command to hunt down the criminal gangs of Daesh and their likes who targeted mosques to sow sedition and undermine national unity," Abadi said on Twitter, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

The Iraqi interior ministry did not blame the attack on any particular group but said it had been the work of "infiltrated elements who want to revive sectarian unrest against the backdrop of the latest incidents in the region," apparently referring to the execution at the weekend in Saudi Arabia of Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, which sparked outrage in Iraq.

Shia politicians and clerics unanimously condemned the execution but several religious leaders from the Sunni minority also denounced it.

Protests took place in Baghdad and elsewhere in the country. Another demonstration called by prominent cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was due to be held later on Monday.