DUBAI, Sept 23: A militant group in Iraq said on Saturday it had killed 10 Indians and Pakistanis whom it had abducted as they were on their way to Syria.

Ansar al-Sunna issued on the Internet photographs of identity cards of four Indians and three Pakistanis, saying they were Shia who worked with a main Iraqi Shia militia. It did not say when the 10 were killed.

It was not clear if the victims were linked to a group of 14 Pakistani and Indian Shia pilgrims who, according to Iraqi police, were snatched and killed in Iraq’s western desert on Sept 2.

“We call upon all those who are attracted by the offers made by the American forces and the apostate Iraqi government... our Mujahideen are watching you and whoever is caught in our hands will face death,” the group said in a statement posted on a website mainly used by Islamist insurgents.

Shia pilgrims are a frequent target for insurgents, and Indian and Pakistani officials said they had issued warnings against travel to Iraq, home to many Shia holy sites.

BLAST: A bomb exploded near a group of women and children queuing for cooking fuel in a Shia stronghold of Baghdad, setting off a fireball that claimed 31 lives on Saturday, the first day of Ramazan.

The explosion and inferno also wounded another 34 people at the service station in Sadr City, and came just 24 hours after an Al Qaeda led group warned of attacks during Ramazan. Most of the victims were women and their children who were waiting for the cooking fuel for the first weekend of Ramazan, which for Sunnis began on Saturday and starts on Sunday for Shias.

But a little-known Sunni insurgent group, “Jund al-Sahaba fi al-Iraq”, or “Soldiers of the (Prophet PBUH) Companions in Iraq”, claimed responsibility for Ramazan’s first attack.

In an Internet message, it said it had placed “a booby-trapped car ... in Sadr City, the city of Rafidha”, a derogatory term used for Shias.—Reuters/AFP