By Xinhua
Tikrit, Iraq : Four people were killed, including a former senior member of Saddam’s Baath Party, in two attacks in the city of Samarra in Salahudin province, a provincial police source said on Sunday.
“Unknown gunmen in a car opened fire on Rasheed Nsaeyf Jasim, a former local senior Baathist, killing him near his house in northern the city,” the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
In a separate incident, clashes erupted in the center of the city when gunmen attacked a group of local Awakening councils fighters near a football stadium, the source said.
The clashes resulted in the killing of three attackers and the capturing of a fourth, he said.
The Awakening Councils are groups of local Sunni neighborhoods fighters, including some powerful anti-U.S. insurgent groups, who have turned their rifles toward the al-Qaida network to provide security to their neighborhoods.
Rifts emerged between the two sides after the al-Qaida members adopted a hard line Islam and exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.