A group of gunmen in Iraq have beheaded a Sunni cleric.

The group cut off the head of the cleric in a village near Muqdadiya town, 80 kilometres northeast of Baghdad.

According to police, the attack was probably based on terror motives.

They said insurgents had been involved in the killing, which culminated in the cleric’s body being set alight.

The cleric, Jabbar Saleh al-Jibouri, in his house when the intruders stabbed him, cut off his head and set fire to his body.

Jibouri, who was a relative of a senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, had only just returned to his house after fleeing with his family due to sectarian violence.

Muqdadiya town is in Diyala, a mixed province with a Sunni majority located just north of Baghdad.

In a separate attack on Thursday, men wearing women’s clothes beheaded the wife of a policeman in a village northwest of Baquba, the capital of Diyala province.