BAGHDAD - Top Sunni sheikh Sattar Abu Reesha, who spearheaded a fight against Al-Qaeda, was killed by a bomb on Thursday just 10 days after US President George W. Bush shook his hand when he visited Iraq.
The attack came hours before Bush was due to make a televised address detailing Washington`s future strategy in war-torn Iraq.
Abu Reesha was killed near his home in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and the region touted by the US military as a success in its fight against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the local affiliate of Osama bin Laden`s jihadist group.
The US military confirmed the killing.
"I can confirm that he was killed in front of his house from an explosion from a roadside bomb," military spokesman Major Winfield S. Danielson told AFP.
Anbar security chief Tareq al-Dulaimi said Abu Reesha "was returning home when his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb planted by insurgents. His car was hit directly."
One bodyguard also died in the attack that marked a bloody start to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Iraqi Sunnis began Ramadan on Thursday while Shiites will begin observing the fasting month from Friday.
Dulaimi told state television that the sheikh while on his way home ordered his convoy to stop so he could help a handicapped man sitting by the roadside.
"Soon after he got back in his car the bomb exploded," the police chief said.
Bush had said during his lightning stopover on September 3 that a reduction in US combat troops in Iraq was possible due to progress on the security front in Anbar, achieved largely due to the fight declared by local sheikhs against Al-Qaeda.
He shook hands with Abu Reesha and praised the Anbar Awakening Conference, a coalition of some 25 tribes which came together in September last year and pledged to fight Al-Qaeda militants by forming their own paramilitary units and supplying recruits to the local police.
Sheikh Reesha, in his forties, was the leading figure in the Anbar Awakening Conference.
"I wish we could do in all the provinces of Iraq what we did in Anbar, which is that the people and the government come together," he said a week ago at a meeting of Iraqi government and US officials in Ramadi, urging other provinces to follow Anbar`s lead in cooperating with the central government.
The meeting, known as the Anbar Forum, was aimed at giving an economic boost to the western province where Sunni Arab former insurgents have joined with US forces to fight Al-Qaeda.
Abu Reesha is the ninth member of his family to be killed by insurgents since the US-led invasion in March 2003. His father, Sheikh Ftikhan, also died in a car bomb attack.
The relative calm of Ramadan was shattered by Abu Reesha`s killing and by another bomb attack in Baghdad on Thursday.
The blast ripped through a crowd of civilians at a public square in the east of the capital, killing at least four people, Iraqi security officials said.
Iraqi authorities have stepped up security measures for Ramadan.
"Orders have been given to the Iraqi police to be extra alert. They have been told to observe any dubious gatherings or inform bomb squads immediately if they see any car parked on sidewalks," an interior ministry official said.
Since the invasion more than four years ago, insurgents and militia have used Ramadan as an occasion to launch spectacular bomb attacks on civilians and security forces.
Baghdad, the epicentre of Shiite-Sunni conflict, is already under a massive security crackdown by American and Iraqi forces as part of a troop "surge" strategy launched in February.
The US military, meanwhile, began a programme on Thursday to release 50 to 80 detainees daily during Ramadan.
Around 20,000 detainees are in US and Iraqi prisons across Iraq, and most have been held for months without charge.
A US general in Iraq on Thursday pointed the finger of blame at Shiite militiamen using what he said was an Iranian-supplied rocket for a fatal attack two days ago on a military base near Baghdad.
Major General Kevin Bergner said the rocket was launched from the Rasheed area of west Baghdad which he said was a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The military said one person was killed and 12 injured in an "indirect fire" attack on Tuesday on Camp Victory, a sprawling military base near Baghdad international airport.
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09/13/2007 14:19 GMT