IRAQ: SHI'ITE MILITIA HANGS UP 15 EXECUTED SUNNIS IN SQUARE

July 30, 2014: Iraqi Shi'ite militia forces executed 15 Sunni Muslims and then hung them from electricity poles in a public square in the town of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, police said.
A police officer at the scene in Baquba, a mixed Sunni and Shi'ite town 65 km (40 miles) from Baghdad, said he believed the gruesome display of the bodies was designed to warn Sunnis off supporting the Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that has seized swathes of land in an advance through northern Iraq.
The victims, who had been kidnapped over the last week, were shot in the head and chest and then hung up by cables.
"The militia forces are preventing the medical crew from taking down the bodies," the police officer said.
"They are following a new tactic of keeping bodies hanging for a longer time to deter the Sunni population from backing the Islamic State. We asked them to let us evacuate the bodies but they refused." (Source: Reuters, July 31, 2014)