By Xinhua
Baghdad : Gunmen killed a leader of Awakening Council group in a northern Baghdad neighborhood on Sunday, a well-informed police source said.
“Ismael Abbas, one of the leaders of Awakening Council groups of the Sha’ab neighborhood was killed when unknown gunmen in a civilian car showered him with bullets,” the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The Awakening Councils are groups of local neighborhoods fighters, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who have turned their rifles toward the al-Qaida network to provide security to their neighborhoods.
Rifts emerged between the Awakening Council groups and the al-Qaida militants after the later adopted a hardline Islam and exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.