Assassins kill 2 more tribal leaders in Baghdad

Assassins kill 2 more tribal leaders in Baghdad
By Mike Drummond | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Two more tribal leaders were assassinated in Baghdad on Tuesday, a day after a bombing at a hotel downtown killed 13 people, including members of a Sunni Muslim council that recently had allied with U.S. forces fighting Sunni insurgents linked to al Qaida.

Sheik Hamid Abdul Farhan al Shujairi, a Sunni, was shot in a mainly Sunni area of Baghdad, police said. He reportedly had attended a conference several weeks ago supporting the government and fighting insurgents.

Gunmen murdered Hamid Abid Sarhan al Shjiri, the sheik of the mixed Sunni-Shiite Shijirat tribe, while he sat in his car in the capital's southern al Saidiyah neighborhood.

The deaths came as Iraqi authorities tried to determine how a bomber made it through a tight security cordon Monday at the Mansour Hotel and detonated explosives that killed at least six members of the Anbar Salvation Council, a Sunni tribal coalition that had been cooperating with U.S. and Iraqi government forces.

Among the dead was Sheik Fasal al Gaood, a council leader and former governor of Anbar province who'd long advocated working with the United States before the U.S. military finally embraced his group late last year.