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Sheik's Mourners Promise Revenge

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By DAVID RISING, The Associated Press

Published: September 15, 2007

BAGHDAD - About 1,500 mourners called for revenge Friday as they buried the leader of the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida, who was assassinated Thursday by a bomb after meeting with President Bush this month.

An al-Qaida front in Iraq claimed responsibility for the blast that killed Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, 37, and three companions. A statement posted on the Internet by the Islamic State of Iraq called Abu Risha 'one of the dogs of Bush' and described his killing as a 'heroic operation that took over a month to prepare.'

The statement could not be independently verified, but it appeared on Web sites commonly used by the insurgents. Al-Qaida earlier killed four of Abu Risha's brothers and six other relatives for working with the U.S. military.

In Diyalah province, meanwhile, a bomb exploded near a U.S. military vehicle on Friday, killing four American soldiers, the U.S. command said. They were the first American deaths reported in Iraq since Monday.

Many al-Qaida fighters were thought to have shifted to Diyalah after Abu Risha's tribal fighters helped drive them out of their sanctuaries in Anbar province.

Scores of Iraqi police and U.S. military vehicles lined the route to protect the funeral procession as it followed the black SUV carrying the Iraq-flag-draped coffin of Abu Risha to the family cemetery just west of Ramadi, Anbar's capital.

'We will take our revenge,' the mourners chanted. 'We will continue the march of Abu Risha.'

The sheik was buried one year to the day after he organized Sunni Arab clans into an alliance to drive al-Qaida in Iraq from sanctuaries in Anbar province where the terror movement had flourished since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the second-highest ranking U.S. officer in Iraq, and several high-ranking government officials attended the funeral, including Iraq's interior and defense ministers and national security adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie.

'We condemn the killing of Abu Risha, but this will not deter us from helping the people of Anbar - we will support them more than before,' al-Rubaie declared.

Iraqi officials said the roadside bomb was planted just outside Abu Risha's walled compound in view of a guard shack and an Iraqi police checkpoint. That raised suspicion that the killing may have been an inside job, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information is sensitive.

During open-air Friday prayers in the streets of Baghdad's Shiite slum Sadr City, a stronghold of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Imam Muhannad al-Gharawi blamed the assassination on the government's inability to secure Iraq.

'The Iraqi people have lost trust with this government, and killings are still going on - the latest is the assassination of the Anbar Awakening Council leader,' he told thousands of worshippers. 'Everyone is threatened with death in this country as long as the American Black House is still giving the orders.'

Abu Risha's assassination cast a cloud over Bush's claims of progress in Iraq, especially in Anbar, which had been the center of the Sunni insurgency until the dramatic turnaround by the local sheiks.

In a televised address Thursday, Bush ordered gradual reductions in U.S. forces in Iraq but rejected calls to end the war. More than 130,000 U.S. troops will remain after the withdrawals are completed in July.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday raised the possibility of cutting U.S. troop levels to 100,000 or so by the end of 2008 if conditions on the ground improve enough.

In violence Friday, a suicide truck bomb hit a police checkpoint near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, killing four policemen.

South of Baghdad, gunmen killed three farmers who were taking their turn guarding a village, police said.

Farther south in the city of Hillah, gunmen attacked the home of Col. Hussein Ali Hassoon al Khafaji, an Iraqi army battalion commander, police said.

In a helicopter assault west of Baghdad, three suspected insurgents were killed and three U.S. soldiers were injured.

Iraqi soldiers led the raid Thursday on a mosque in Karmah, a town in Anbar province, the U.S. military said. The target was a high-ranking al-Qaida in Iraq leader.

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