A group of unidentified armed men Friday morning fired with machine guns at a mosque in Baghdad and caused casualties, Qatar-based al-Jazeera television reported.

Shootings at mosques have become quite often since a double-car bombing killed the leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Baqueral-Hakim in the southern city of Najaf last week. A total of 83 were killed and hundreds of others wounded in the terrorist attack.

On Wednesday morning, Sayd al-Wa'ith, a representative of the most prominent Shiite cleric in Iraq Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, miraculously escaped an assassination attempt when he was targeted at a holy mosque in Baghdad.

The gunmen were caught and handed over to the Iraqi police for investigation.
 
(Xinhua News Agency September 5, 2003)