Attack on Sheiks is a huge mistake

AP:

A suicide bomber apparently targeting a meeting of U.S.-allied Sunni sheiks penetrated layers of security and blew himself up in a hotel lobby on Monday, killing four tribal leaders and at least eight others, police reported.

The sheiks were associated with the Anbar Salvation Council, which had taken up arms to help drive extremists of al-Qaida in Iraq from the western province of Anbar.

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The bombing at the high-rise Mansour Hotel, on the west bank of the Tigris River in central Baghdad, struck at about noon as the lobby bustled with members of news media organizations headquartered at the hotel and other guests, witnesses said.

A man wearing a belt of explosives walked into the lobby, approached the group of sheiks meeting there, and detonated his bomb, said a police officer based at the hotel, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He identified four tribal leaders killed as former Anbar governor Fassal al-Guood, sheik of the al-Bu Nimir tribe, Sheik Abdul-Azizi al-Fahdawi of the Fahad tribe, Sheik Tariq Saleh al-Assafi and Col. Fadil al-Nimrawi, both of the al-Bu Nimr tribe. Three of al-Guood's guards also were killed, the police officer said.

"It was a great breach of security because there are three checkpoints, one outside and two inside," said Saif al-Rubaie, a 28-year-old hotel worker who saw the blast.

After the blast, a member of the Anbar Salvation Council said in the provincial capital of Ramadi that the sheiks meeting at the Mansour Hotel had been dropped from the council "because they did not continue working with us." He said they had been meeting secretly with government officials, about unspecified matters.

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This attack will likely drive the tribes toward the Salvation Council. It will provoke revenge and not retrenchment from the tribes. In the hearts and minds battle intimidation like this is a real loser especially where there is an alternative like joining with the US against the insurgents responsible for the attacks.