Iraqi insurgents kill key US ally

Thursday, 13 September 2007

A key Sunni ally of the US and Iraqi governments has been killed in a bomb attack in the city of Ramadi, Iraqi police and media say.

Abdul Sattar Abu Risha was the leader of an alliance of Sunni Arab tribes that rejected al-Qaeda because of its methods and worked with the US.

He was killed in a bomb attack near his home in Iraq's western Anbar province.

Abu Risha was among a group of tribal leaders who met President George W Bush during his visit to Iraq last week.

"The sheikh's car was totally destroyed by the explosion. Abu Risha was killed and two of his bodyguards were seriously wounded," Ramadi police officer Ahmed Mahmoud al-Alwani told Reuters.

Later it was reported that both bodyguards had died.

Abu Risha was the leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, also known as the Anbar Awakening, an alliance of clans which sided with US forces and the Iraqi government in order to try to reclaim Anbar province from al-Qaeda.

'Model' for Iraq

The US has been trying to organise Sunni tribes against the insurgent group.

It held up Abu Risha and his tribal fellows as a success story and a model for other parts of Iraq, saying they inflicted considerable losses and setbacks on al-Qaeda.

Only on Monday, in his testimony to Congress, the top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said Anbar province showed how Iraq could throw off its violence and move forward.

"A year ago the province was assessed 'lost' politically," he said.

"Today, it is a model of what happens when local leaders and citizens decide to oppose al-Qaeda and reject its Taleban-like ideology."

He said the number of attacks had fallen from 1,350 in the month of October last year to little more than 200 last month.

Abu Risha expressed the same sentiment only last week, saying: "I wish we could do in all the provinces of Iraq what we did in Anbar, which is that the people and the government come together."

Later, President Bush is expected to announce that the US may pull some 30,000 US troops out of Iraq by the middle of next year - a move made possible partly by the progress in pacifying Anbar.