Seven members of a Sunni paramilitary group in Iraq were kidnapped and then killed by gunmen who claimed to be affiliated with al-Qaida's branch in a mosque near Baghdad on Monday evening, a local police source said.

A group of gunmen wearing military uniforms broke into the mosque of Tawab in Yusufiya district, 20 km south of Baghdad, and kidnapped seven members of the Awakening Council. After recitation of the victims' names, the gunmen executed the killing with automatic weapons outside the mosque, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Iraqi security forces who rushed to the scene later found a paper near the bodies on which wrote "the Islamic State of Iraq," the source added.

The Islamic State of Iraq is an umbrella group that styled itself as al-Qaida's branch in Iraq and has claimed responsibility for a number of terror attacks across the country.

The Awakening Council, a consortium of Sunni paramilitary groups, which once cooperated with the Islamic State of Iraq in fighting American troops and Shiite militia after the 2003 U.S.- led invasion, later turned their rifles against al-Qaida when the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni communities.

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