Pat Dollard

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Anbar, Feb 23, (VOI) – A leader of the Falluja Sahwa (Awakening) tribal fighters was killed along with two of his aides in a double suicide bombing attack by two brothers, who targeted a checkpoint in the northern part of the city, police said.

“Two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a checkpoint of the Falluja Sahwa force in al-Sajar area, northern Falluja, killing Sheikh Ibrahim al-Mutairi and two of his aides,” Brig. Faisal al-Zawbaie told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).

“The Iraqi police identified the two bombers as brothers and verified their names,” Zawbaie said.

Armed organizations under the name of Sahwa councils were formed by Sunni tribes in most hotspots in the country with the aim of fighting al-Qaeda network in those areas.

It all started in September 2006 with the establishment of the Anbar Sahwa Council, which managed to flush out al-Qaeda from the province once considered Iraq’s most tense in security terms. Al-Qaeda, however, assassinated the former chief of the Anbar Salvation Council, Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, in a car bomb attack in mid-September 2007.

Falluja, the largest city in the predominantly Sunni province of al-Anbar, lies 45 km west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.