Iraq Watch: November 23, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Militants wearing Iraqi army uniforms burst into the house of a senior Sunni sheik near Baghdad early Wednesday killing him and three of his sons.

Khadim Sarhid al-Hemaiyem was a regional leader of the prominent Dulaimi tribe, one of the largest in Iraq. Tribes, or ashira, play an integral part in Iraqi society with many Iraqis pledging their allegiance to a tribe or clan as opposed to the national government.

Iraqi security forces denied involvement in the assassination of al-Hemaiyem and blamed Sunni-led insurgents, bent on intimidating Sunnis from voting in the upcoming December 15 elections, for the killing. However Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, a spokesman for the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), pinned the blame on Shiite-dominated security forces stating, "We warn the [Iraqi] government against continuing with this tyranny."

In Baghdad, insurgents killed the former chief of traffic police, General Mahdi Kassem and Radi Ismail Jawad, a high-ranking official from the Ministry of Industry.

Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier - assigned to Task Force Baghdad - died from a gunshot wound in central Baghdad the U.S. military announced on Wednesday.

Also, the militant group al-Qaida in Iraq released a statement on an Islamic Web site formally denying that their leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a weekend raid on an alleged al-Qaida safe house in the northern city of Mosul.

Lawyers for deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and seven other co-defendants have reportedly agreed to end their self-imposed boycott of the legal proceedings and will be present for the landmark trials re-start which is scheduled for Monday. The group of defense attorneys decided to boycott the trial following the assassinations of two fellow lawyers in recent weeks.