MORE RED ON RED fire in Iraq:

BAGHDAD: Iraqi insurgents in the Sunni city of Ramadi have turned against their al-Qa'ida allies after a bomb attack killed 80 people, sparking tit-for-tat assassinations.

Residents yesterday said at least three prominent figures on both sides were among those killed after local insurgent groups formed an alliance against al-Qa'ida, blaming it for massacring police recruits in Ramadi on January 5.

"There was a meeting right after the bombings," one Ramadi resident said, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals.

"Tribal leaders and political figures gathered to form the Anbar Revolutionaries to fight al-Qa'ida in Anbar and force them to leave the province.

"Since then, there has been all-out war between them."

[...] Last week, three local Islamist groups around Ramadi - the 1920 Brigades, the Mujaheddin Army and the Islamic Movement for Iraq's Mujaheddin - met to distance themselves from their fellow Islamists in al-Qa'ida.

Iraqi newspapers quoted a statement from six armed groups on Monday announcing they had united to form the "People's Cell" to confront al-Qa'ida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and preserve security in the Anbar province.

The statement condemned "armed operations which target innocents" and affirmed "a halt to co-operation with al-Qa'ida".

In a further sign of the rifts emerging within Iraq's insurgency, Zarqawi has also stepped aside as the head of a new council of radical groups in favour of an Iraqi, according to a posting on a website used by al-Qa'ida.

UPDATE. Still more:

Hundreds of Iraqis staged a demonstration in the restive city of Samarra on Tuesday in a show of defiance against al Qaeda militants they blamed for killing dozens of police recruits last week. Nationalist rebels and tribal leaders in the city north of Baghdad had already let it be known they were joining forces to try to expel the foreign-influenced Islamists from the area, part of a trend in Sunni Arab areas that U.S. commanders have pointed to optimistically as a sign of political development. The protesters, estimated by police to number 700 to 1,000 and organised by the Iraqi Islamic Party and Muslim Scholars Association, major forces in Sunni politics, accused al Qaeda of killing some 40 local men who were hauled off a bus near Samarra last week after leaving a police academy in Baghdad and killed.

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