Iraq: not a civil war

KIRKUK, Iraq (AFP) - Abdel Hussein al-Lami, whose brother and two nephews were gunned down in the northern Iraqi town of Hawijah, seethes and promises revenge. Nasser Bonyan al-Lami worked with two of his sons selling sandwiches in the Sunni-majority town when gunmen burst into their small eatery and machine-gunned them to death.

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A Sunni local leader from Hawijah, Raken Abdallah al-Sabeh, vowed to fight "those people who want to destroy our towns and kill our sons, be they Arabs, Kurds, Sunnis or Shiites."

"They have declared war on us, and we too declare war on them," he said, noting that a local Sunni tribal sheikh was also killed Monday by a roadside bomb.

Sheikh Tarekh Abdallah Ibrahim al-Obaidi of the powerful Obaidi tribe was killed in a roadside bomb early Monday.

Hawijah has invited the wrath of Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi after tribes there declared war on him in anger over the death of local leaders and Iraqi policeman.