A leader of government-backed Sunni militia was killed in a roadside bomb explosion in a town near Baghdad on Wednesday, a well-informed police source said, Xinhua reported.
The blast struck the vehicle of Shiekh Lateef, leader of Awakening Council group in the village of the al-Der'iyah, near the town of Madain, some 30 km southeast of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The blast killed Lateef and wounded two of his body guards, along with destroying his vehicle, the source said.
The government-backed Awakening Council groups, also known as Sahwa in Arabic, are mostly Sunni paramilitary groups who fight the extremist Sunni Muslim militants of al-Qaida in Iraq network.
Most of the councils, originally, are Sunni anti-U.S. insurgent groups who turned their rifles against al-Qaida after rifts emerged between Sunni Arab community and al-Qaida as the latter adopted a hardline Islam and exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.