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Baghdad: On the first day of a ceasefire in Baghdad's Sadr City between Shiite militants and US-backed Iraqi forces, authorities reported no violence as gunmen withdrew from the streets and shops reopened after two months of intense gunbattles.
Senior US military officials, however, have cautioned reporters on Sunday that the Iraqi government is still working out details of the truce with the elements of radical cleric Moqtada Al Sadr's Mahdi Army.
"We did see a dialogue yesterday. It is important to emphasise that it is an ongoing dialogue process," says US military spokesman Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll. "It is premature to say there is an agreed truce." The US military has repeatedly emphasised that its clashes are with rogue elements of Al Sadr's Mahdi Army.
The concrete barricade which the US military has been erecting in the southern section of the impoverished area and which had emerged as a key factor in fierce clashes over the past several weeks remained, however.
Rear Admiral Patrick said the 14-point agreement between the Sadrists and the government had led to a "decline in operations from last night" in Sadr City.
Concrete barricade
Since late March, the district - a stronghold of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia - had reverberated with gunfire, shelling and air strikes as militiamen clashed with US and Iraqi government troops. Hundreds of people have been killed and scores wounded.
But on Saturday, Sadrists and Iraqi officials announced they had agreed to end the fighting.
The clashes had erupted after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki ordered a crackdown on Shiite fighters in the main southern city of Basra. The fighting swiftly spread to other Shiite areas of Iraq, particularly Sadr City.
They intensified in the Baghdad district after US forces began constructing the concrete barricade along Al Quds street in its southern section in what they said was a bid to stop rocket and mortar fire against the Green Zone compound which houses the Iraqi government and the US embassy.
US commander Brigadier General James Milano told reporters yesterday that more than 1,000 rockets or mortar rounds had been fired from Sadr City since late March.
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