A Gunman shot dead an anti-al-Qaida group leader near a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad, a well- informed police source said Sunday.

"The leader of the Awakening council group in the al-Jamea neighborhood, was gunned down by an armed man using a pistol with muffler while leaving the Mulla Hweish mosque in the area after the noon prayers on Saturday," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The victim is well-known in the neighborhood as "Colonel Rabie, " the source said.

The Awakening councils, or al-Sahwa, are groups of local Sunni neighborhood fighters, including some powerful anti-U.S.insurgent groups, have turned their rifles toward the al-Qaida network to provide security to their neighborhoods.

Rifts emerged between the two sides after the al-Qaida members adopted a hardline Islam and exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

However, on Saturday, both the Iraq's Defense Minister, Gen. Abdul Qadir al-Obiedi and the Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said the Iraqi government will not tolerate the U.S.-backed Sunni groups turning into a "third force" along with the army and the police forces.

"We reject them (Awakening Councils fighters) turning into a third military organization," Obiedi told a joint news conference with Bolani.

"The only two forces are the ministries of defense and interior, " he said.

For his art, Bolani said that his government plans to integrate some 20 percent of the councils' fighters into the Iraqi security forces, while the rest of them would be offered vocational training for other civilian jobs.

The two minister's comments came a day after Iraqi most powerful Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim called for the Sunni fighters to be under tight government control.

(Xinhua News Agency December 23, 2007)