A human rights lawyer and activist was killed in the Iraqi city of Mosul by Islamic State militants because of Facebook posts critical of the group's destruction of shrines, churches, mosques and cultural sites, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq reported Thursday.
A group of "House of the Head" shrines, containing the small beaded personal pyramids, or "inner heads," that Yoruba people receive at birth, bristle majestically with cowrie shells.
The group say shrines and statues of Iraq's pre-Islamic history are "false idols" and have to be destroyed.
Last year, a group of 81 lawmakers visited the shrine during the same season, when Yasukuni celebrates a three-day spring festival.
Last year, a group of 81 lawmakers visited the shrine during the same three-day spring festival, when many nationalists say they feel obligated to recognize soldiers' ultimate sacrifice for their country.
Yuichiro Hata, the land and transportation minister, and Mikio Shimoji, the minister for postal service privatization, were among a group of lawmakers visiting the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, seen by many in the region as a symbol of Japan's wartime militarism.
He broke off from a group of veteran friends visiting Yasukuni Shrine to speak with a foreign journalist, and sat in the cooling shade on a park bench, near a huge artillery piece and locomotive from the so-called Burma-Thailand Death Railway, whose construction killed many thousands of forced laborers.
Then, one morning in early March 2009, a group of Pakistani Taliban arrived at the shrine before dawn and placed dynamite packages around the squinches supporting the shrine's dome.
