Fallujah official, an al-Qaida critic, assassinated: Sheik had taken job despite friends' pleas

[jmc247]

Source: AP

The Fallujah city council chairman, a critic of al-Qaida who took the job after his three predecessors were assassinated, was killed yesterday, the latest blow in a violent internal Sunni struggle for control of an insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.

Sami Abdul-Amir al-Jumaili was gunned down by attackers in a passing car as he was walking outside his home in central Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, according to the police.

His assassination came a month after he agreed to take the dangerous job - the only person willing to do so - with promises to improve services and work with the Americans to ease traffic-clogging checkpoints in the city with a population of an estimated 150,000 to 200,000.

U.S. officials say tribal leaders and even some other insurgents are increasingly repelled by the group's brutality and religious extremism. The tribes also are competing with al-Qaida for influence and control over diminishing territory in the face of U.S. assaults.

Read more: http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070422/REPOSITORY/704220389/1013/NEWS03

[Kagemusha]

1. How does that last line make sense?

The US has been assaulting the tribes or something? (Not the poster's fault, the AP just makes no sense some days, usually when it quotes US officials blindly)