Special report: Tension escalates in Iraq    

    TIKRIT, Iraq, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Two members affiliated to local anti-Qaida Awakening Council armed groups were killed and three others injured in shootings in Salahudin province on Tuesday, a provincial police source said.

    The two anti-Qaida fighters were killed Tuesday when unknown gunmen showered their car with bullets while they were driving in the al-Dour town, 15 km east of Tikrit, the capital of the province, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

    In a separate incident, three more anti-Qaida fighters were wounded when another armed group attacked their checkpoint on Monday night in the town of Yathrib, 70 km north of Baghdad, the source said.

    The Awakening Councils are armed groups of local neighborhoods, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who have turned their rifles toward the al-Qaida network after the latter adopted a hardline Islam and exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

    Analysts say that the al-Qaida has two strategies for now, one is directing strikes against the mainly Sunni groups members to intimidate and punish them for cooperating with the Americans, and the other is infiltrating the anti-Qaida groups to collect intelligence and discredit the groups in the eyes of the Shiite-dominated government.