Leader of major Sunni insurgent group killed - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Leader of major Sunni insurgent group killed

BAGHDAD — A military leader of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a major Sunni Arab insurgent group, was killed Tuesday west of Baghdad, the group announced in an Internet statement.

A local official confirmed the death of Harith Dhaher al-Dhari, saying he died when rocket-propelled grenades hit his car and an accompanying vehicle in the Abu Ghraib district. Two associates also died, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

The U.S. military, however, said al-Dhari was killed when two suicide car bombers targeted a house in the Abu Ghraib area. Three bodies were found by U.S. troops, it said.

The district official also blamed the attack on al-Qaida in Iraq, but did not provide any proof.

In a statement posted on the Internet, the insurgent group said: “The 1920 Brigades mourns its martyr, the brave leader Harith Dhaher Khamis al-Dhari who fell today, his honorable blood spilled on the battlefield of his jihad (holy struggle) in Abu Ghraib.”

The authenticity of the brief statement could not be verified but it appeared on a site that routinely publishes militant literature.

The killing of al-Dhari is likely to deepen the increasingly bloody rift between government-backed opponents of al-Qaida and supporters of the terror group in the Sunni Arab communities west of Baghdad.

The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been making progress rallying tribesmen in Anbar province, the epicenter of the Sunni insurgency, to join in the fight against al-Qaida, the deadliest terror group in Iraq.

Government-backed tribal militias have been trying to chase al-Qaida fighters out of the vast province, and al-Qaida has responded with bomb attacks on leaders and key supporters of the tribes allied against them.

“A number of martyrs fell in Abu Ghraib after its noble sons decided to challenge terrorism and its defeated base,” al-Maliki’s office said in a statement after the killing, suggesting that al-Dhari, his group or both might have turned against al-Qaida.

“We emphasize that our valiant forces are standing together with the honorable tribesmen who rose up in Anbar, Abu Ghraib, Diyala and everywhere else in Iraq to break the back of terrorism,” the statement added.

The killing came one day after the departing U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters that American and Iraqi officials had talked to representatives of insurgent groups hoping to draw more Sunni groups away from al-Qaida.

The 1920 Revolution Brigades has consistently been rumored to have taken part in those talks, which are believed to have been deadlocked over the demand that insurgents lay down their arms and join the political process.

Al-Dhari’s father is the sheik of al-Zuba’a tribe in Abu Ghraib. Also a member of this tribe is Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie, who was seriously wounded Friday when a suicide bomber blew up his vest of explosives at the prayer room of his Baghdad home.

The Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida-linked group, claimed responsibility for the attack on al-Zubaie, which killed nine people.

In separate statements, al-Dhari was mourned by the Iraqi Islamic Party, the country’s largest Sunni Arab party, and by the Association of Muslim Scholars, a radical Sunni group led by the slain leader’s uncle, Harith al-Dhari.

Both groups have long been suspected of maintaining links to Sunni Arab insurgent groups. The Islamic Party, however, is widely viewed as a force of moderation within the Sunni Arab minority, which is deeply embittered by the loss of its domination under Saddam Hussein. The association, by contrast, has grown increasingly militant.