TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran’s senior Sunni clerics have strongly condemned the crimes of ISIL terrorist group in Iraq and called on Muslim states take action against the Takfiri militants.



 “Members of ISIL terrorist group are stooges of intelligence services of the arrogant powers which aim to tarnish the true image of Islam,” said the Muslim clerics in a statement published on Thursday.





The senior Sunni clerics also pointed to the Islamophobia propaganda campaigns launched by the US and Israel to counter Islamic Awakening movement and said they are now, with support of some reactionary regional states, are plotting to wage “Muslims against Muslims” confrontation.

They further unity and peaceful coexistence among Muslims to counter such plots.

Earlier, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei had dismissed as a “lie” the speculation fueled by enemies of Islam that the ongoing turmoil in Iraq is a confrontation between the Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

“This war is between terrorism and counter-terrorism, a war between proponents of objectives of the US and the West and supporters of the independence of nations, and a war between humanity and barbarism and savageness,” Imam Khamenei had underlined.

The United Nations says 1.2 million Iraqis have been driven from their homes by violence this year, hundreds of thousands of them by a three-week-old militant offensive that has swept up a swathe of territory north of Baghdad.

Iraq has been witnessing a new wave of violence fueled by Takfiri terrorists. The so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant militants have been operating in the Iraqi provinces of Nineveh, Diyala, Salahuddin and al-Anbar.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that the country’s security forces would confront the terrorists, calling the seizure of the northern city of Mosul a “conspiracy.”

The Iraqi premier has also blamed Saudi Arabia and Qatar for the security crisis and growing terrorism in his country, denouncing Riyadh as a major supporter of global terrorism.