Baghdad: An Iraqi tennis coach and two of his players were killed this week in Baghdad because they were wearing shorts, authorities said on Saturday.
Gunmen stopped the car in which the Sunni coach and two of his Shiite players were riding and asked them to step out before shooting them on Wednesday in volatile Saidiyah neighborhood of southwestern Baghdad, said Secreatary General of Iraqi Tennis Union, Manham Kubba.
Extremists distributed leaflets warning people in mostly Sunni neighborhoods of Saidiyah and Ghazaliyah not to wear shorts, police said.
"Wearing shorts by youth is prohibited because it violates the principals of Islamic religion when showing forbidden parts of the body. Also women should wear the veil," the leaflets said.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but it came amidst the fear of a rise in Islamic extremism in the war-torn country.
Sunni cleric Eid al-Zoubayi denounced the attack on the athletes. "Islamic religion is an easy religion and it allows wearing sport shorts as long as they don't show the forbidden parts of the body, so the acts that are targeting the sport are criminal," he said.
The killing of the tennis players was the second attack against athletes in just over a week.
A taekwondo team was kidnapped in western Iraq while driving to a training camp in neighboring Jordan on May 17.
The 15 athletes were snatched on a road between the Sunni cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
More than 30 people were killed in attacks nationwide on Saturday, including four who died when a bomb in a parked car exploded near a busy bus station in southern Baghdad.
Seven people also were wounded in the blast, which left passers-by bloodied and damaged a local restaurant.
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