"Two bombs later went off in the eastern town of Muqdadiya, killing at least 20 people and wounding another 50 [while] another blast in a southeastern Baghdad suburb killed seven more," Reuters reports. "Islamic State militants controlling swathes of Iraq's north and west claimed responsibility for the mall attacks, which it said had targeted a gathering of 'rejectionist heathens', its derogatory term for Shi'ite Muslims."

Police have now regained control of the mall. There are no hostages. The attackers shot and killed 5 people upon entering before detonating explosive vests. 

*  *  *

Last week, two attacks on Sunni mosques in Iraq suggested a violent sectarian backlash may be in the cards for the war-torn country on the heels of Saudi Arabi's move to execute prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. 

As we noted in "Iraq Says Mosque Bombings Were False Flag ISIS Attacks," the sectarian issue is particularly divisive in post-Ba'thist Iraq and thus it wouldn't exactly be a surprise if the country' Shiite majority lashed out at Sunnis following al-Nimr's rather untimely demise. 

Iraqi officials however, said the attacks were likely false flags staged by ISIS in an effort to exploit the Sheikh's execution and derail efforts to unite Sunni tribesman and Iran's powerful Shiite militias in a coordinated effort to drive Islamic State from the country. 

Now, gunmen have taken some 75 hostages at a mall in a Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad.