In Salahudin province north of Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on the car of Sheikh Hussein Awad Khalifa, leader of a local government-backed Awakening Council group, while driving in the town of Tuz-Khurmato, some 220 km north of Baghdad, killing him and one of his bodyguards, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The Awakening Council group, also known as Sons of Iraq movement or Sahwa, consists of mostly anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent militant groups, who turned their rifles to fight al-Qaida network after Sahwa's leaders became dismayed by al-Qaida's brutality and religious zealotry in the country.
The ethnically mixed town of Tuz-Khurmato is part of disputed areas claimed both by the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan and Baghdad central government.
In a separate incident, a suicide bomber drove his explosive- laden car into the entrance of Ghazaliyah district in western Baghdad and blew it up, killing one civilian and injuring four others, an Interior Ministry source anonymously told Xinhua.
The blast also destroyed several nearby civilian cars and buildings at the scene, the source said.
Violence is still common in the Iraqi cities despite the dramatic decrease since its peak in 2006 and 2007 when the country was engulfed in sectarian killings.
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