– U.S ALLY SHRIKH KILLED IN IRAQ

 

* Exactly three weeks after a prominent Sunni tribal leader, Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who switched sides from an Iraqi insurgence leader and became a pro USA ally, was killed in a bomb attack, another Sheikh with a similar background was killed in a similar way.

Sheikh Muawiya Jebara, a senior member of the “Salahuddin Awakening Council”, and three of his bodyguards were killed, on 10/04/2007 mid-afternoon, by a powerful roadside bomb as his convoy traveled near Samarra, about 120 km North of Baghdad.

Sheikh Muawiya Jebara is one of the Sunnites tribal leaders that switched sides and are currently fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq alongside US troops. Sheikh Sabah Mutashar al-Shimmary, the deputy leader of the council, was wounded in the attack

* At the same day, 10/04/2007, Abbas al-Khafaji, the Shiaa’ mayor of Iskandariya, about 40 km South of Baghdad, was killed with four of his bodyguards when a roadside bomb exploded near their car at a checkpoint. Abbas al-Khafaji was a senior member of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) – a Shiite party. His town is a mixed Sunnite-Shiite town in the heartland of the Sunni “triangle” of Iraq.  Abbas al-Khafaji got a reputation of reconcile between Shiite and Sunnite, keeping the Shiite population and successfully avoid sectarian cleansing in his town.

* Still on 10/04/2007 the US Army in Iraq informed the detainment, on 09/29/2007, of MP Naif Jassim Mohammed, in the town of Sharkat, when he attended a meeting with local Al Qaeda suspects.  MP Naif Jassim Mohammed, a senior Sunni alliance block member in the Iraqi Parliament, was caught in a joint IRAQI/US forces raid against Al Qaeda cells in Sharkat about 270 km North-West of Baghdad.

* A day earlier, on 10/03/2007 morning, the Polish Ambassador to Iraq Edward Pietrzyk survived an assassination attempt when his convoy was attacked by triple road side bombs as he left his residence in Al-Arasat neighborhood in Baghdad.  Two Iraqis were killed and 14 people were wounded, among them the ambassador Edward Pietrzyk, and two other Poles.

Summary ;

Despite the achievement of reducing violence in Iraq and, especially, random suicide attacks which claimed the life of many innocents, it is obvious that the Iraqi insurgency permeates to the security establishment and has collaborators everywhere, has a good and precise intelligence and is a major threat to stability in Iraq.  

* Related topics –

02/2006 – AL-ASKARIYA BOMBING
06/2007 – TRIBAL LEADERS  KILLED IN BAGHDAD
09/2007 – SUNNI AND SHIITE LEADERS  KILLED  

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