Saudi embassy in Baghdad targeted by rocket attack
The embassy was reopened on Friday after being closed since 1990.
IRAQ (Web Desk) - Saudi Arabia’s newly opened embassy in Baghdad was targeted by a rocket attack on Monday following the execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
A video released by Russain media from the incident in Iraq’s capital city, showed helicopters circling the building and smoke rising from where the missile struck.
Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed 47 people convicted of "terrorism", including a prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, in a move which drew international outcry and censure.
The embassy was reopened on Friday after being closed since 1990, when former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, promoting Riyadh to cut ties with Baghdad.
Iran s foreign ministry accused Saudi Arabia of stoking regional tension Monday after the kingdom broke off diplomatic relations and said Iranian embassy staff must leave in the next 24 hours.
"Saudi Arabia sees not only its interests but also its existence in pursuing crises and confrontations and attempts to resolve its internal problems by exporting them to the outside," said ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari.
His remarks came the morning after Saudi Arabia s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced diplomatic ties had been cut, giving the Iranian diplomats 48 hours notice to depart.
Two Sunni mosques bombed, muezzin killed: police
Blasts rocked two Sunni mosques in central Iraq Monday, amid fears of renewed sectarian strife following Saudi Arabia s execution of a prominent Shiite 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 (50 miles) 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.
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