ISIS militants wielding AK-47s slaughter 14 Real Madrid fans at supporters meeting in Iraq 'because they think football is anti-Muslim'

ISIS have slaughtered at least 14 Real Madrid fans at a supporters club in northern Iraq. 

Three gunmen opened fire with machine guns around midnight at the cafe in the predominately Shi'ite Muslim town of Balad. Gruesome pictures from the scene show the floor covered in broken glass and soaked in blood in
the cafe where up to 50 Real fans had gathered.

Posters of the club's badge, players and coach Zinedine Zidane can be seen hanging from the walls. 

President of the Madrid supporters club, Ziad Subhan, said: 'A group of Islamic terrorists, from ISIS, came into the café, armed with AK-47s, shooting at random at everyone who was inside'.

When asked about the motive for the attack, the president replied: 'They don't like football, they think it's anti-Muslim. They just carry out attacks like this. This is a terrible tragedy'.  

At least 14 people are dead and a further 20 injured.

Javier Tebas Medrano, president of La Liga, said: 'Dismayed by the attack against a sentence of Real Madrid [fans] in Iraq. Terrorism attacks the football. We are with the victims and their families.' 

The assailants fled to a nearby vegetable market after police and residents chased them down. 

They were cornered into a disused building and exchanged gunfire, security sources said. Four were killed and two were critically wounded in the shoot-out, medical sources said.

ISIS said in a statement three gunmen had stormed the cafe, before one of them blew himself up as rescue services tried to evacuate the wounded. It said the two other attackers had detonated their explosive belts.

The murderous organisation said the attack was the latest in a campaign to honour Abdel Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, the group's second-in-command, who was killed in a coalition strike in March. 

A Reuters witness saw the scorched body of a suspected assailant hanging upside down from a pole outside the cafe on Friday morning.

Residents said they had seized the man from a nearby house where he had fled after the massacre. They said they had burned him alive when he confessed. An intelligence official confirmed this account.   

The storming of the cafe was a shift in tactic from the suicide car bombings ISIS has used to inflict maximum casualties in Shi'ite towns and cities.

ISIS nearly overran Balad, 80 km (50 miles) northof Baghdad, in 2014 and maintains a frontline around 40 km away.

Friday's attackers had passed three police checkpointsbefore reaching their target, police sources said. 

Following the attack, security forces were deployed throughout the town. 

Source:Daily mail