Gunmen stormed the house of an anti-al-Qaida tribal chief and killed his wife and children, hours after the Iraqi government announced that leaders of the militant group had been killed in a raid, police said Tuesday.
The Sunni militia leader was not at home when the killings happened. The armed men cut the throats of his three young sons and shot his wife and a daughter in the head, police said.
The killings occurred late on Monday in Tarmiya, a mostly Sunni town 15 miles north of Baghdad that was once a stronghold of al-Qaida before tribal chiefs turned on the group and allied themselves with U.S. forces instead.
A police source said the authorities believed the killings might have been a reaction to the deaths of al-Qaida in Iraq's top two leaders on Sunday.
Al-Qaida's Iraq leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported head of its local affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, were found dead in a hole in the ground after their safe house northwest of Baghdad was hit by a missile and stormed by Iraqi and U.S. troops.
The decision by Sunni tribal chiefs to turn on al-Qaida in 2006 and 2007 helped drive the insurgency out of much of Iraq. Insurgents frequently try to take revenge on them.
The deaths of Masri and Baghdadi could be a major set-back to the stubborn insurgency at a time when Iraq is emerging from the sectarian slaughter unleashed after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion but still struggling to end suicide bombings.
