The leader of Saddam Hussein's tribe is killed by a bomb after speaking publicly in favor of reconciliation with the government in Baghdad. Sheik Ali al-Nida, head of the Bani al-Nasiri tribe, which dominated the government under Saddam, was killed by a bomb attached to his car, a police official

in the northern Salahuddin Province said. The bomb detonated while he was driving near his home in the village of Ouja near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit on the Tigris River. The blast also killed two bodyguards, according to the police official, who was not authorised to speak publicly about the assassination. Nida was known as a moderate among Sunni tribal leaders, despite his ties with the former regime. Still, he had never joined the pro-American tribal alliances known as the Awakening Councils. And when the Iraqi government hanged Saddam on New Year's Eve, 2006, Nida claimed the body for burial. Recently, Nida had received menacing phone calls accusing him of treason, the police official said. He fled to Syria but then returned. Under Saddam's rule, members of the Bani al-Nasiri tribe occupied the senior posts in the Baath Party and government. And in spite of the ostensibly modernizing ideology of the party he led, Saddam always retained a strong tribal identity, bearing three tattooed dots on his wrist that identified him as a member of the tribe. Government plans census The Iraqi government announced that it would conduct a census next year in an effort to determine the numbers of the country's religious and ethnic groups, The Associated Press reported from Baghdad. The population count would be the first since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime five years ago and would take place in October 2009, according to a statement by the government's media office. The statement called upon all ministries to work together to organize the census. The last census was conducted in 1997, but the three northern Kurdish provinces were excluded because they were beyond the control of the central government. The 1997 census put the country's population at more than 26 million. The country's first census 80 years ago put the population at fewer than 3 million. A new census would settle controversies about the size of the country's religious communities. Shi'ites claim to be the majority population, at about 60%, a figure disputed by Sunni Arabs.