Jihadist Sites Boast of Massacre Showing Widening Iraq Rifts

An al-Qaeda-affiliated group said it killed 1,700 Iraqis, setting social media and jihadist forums ablaze with claims that could further fuel the country’s sectarian tensions and propel it closer to civil war.

The claims by militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, posted on jihadist forums and on Twitter, couldn’t be independently verified. They were accompanied by photos of the purported mass shootings, images that recalled some of the footage from the civil war in Syria, where about 160,000 people have been killed, many of them civilians. If verified, the massacres would be among the worst atrocities in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein unleashed sectarian battles between the Shiite Muslim majority and the Sunni minority that had held power for decades.