Gunmen wound sahwa fighter near Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: Unidentified persons attacked the house of a sahwa (awakening) tribal fighter in a village southwest of Kirkuk city, wounding him, a source from the Kirkuk police operations room said. “The gunmen managed to escape after attacking the sahwa fighter’s house in the village of Dibaa al-Jadida, al-Rashad district, (35 km) southwest of Kirkuk,” the source told IraqiNews.com. “The al-Rashad police station personnel rushed to the scene and took the wounded fighter to the Kirkuk Public Hospital for treatment,” he added, not giving more details about the wounded man or the reasons behind the attack. Sahwa councils were formed in a number of Iraqi provinces like al-Anbar, Diala, Ninewa and Salah al-Din with the aim of mustering political and local tribal powers to fight armed groups, particularly al-Qaeda network, in those areas. These councils are usually led by tribal chiefs or notables in the provinces. After the assassination of his father and six of his brothers by al-Qaeda Organization in Iraq in 2004, Sheikh Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha founded the Anbar sahwa Council and chaired the Iraq sahwa Congress, an alliance encompassing 42 clans that pledged to fight al-Qaeda members. The sahwa fighters managed to flush out armed groups from a number of areas once considered strongholds of gunmen for years. Abu Risha, however, was killed in an IED attack that targeted his house in al-Ramadi, capital of the predominantly Sunni Anbar. The attack also left his bodyguard and two other escorts killed and his nephew seriously wounded. The oil-rich city of Kirkuk lies 250 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. AmR (S)       1