Residents buried their dead and swept rubble from the streets in the southern Iraqi city of Basra today, but clashes continued in Baghdad despite a truce to end a week of violence.
Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called his fighters off the streets yesterday, nearly a week after a crackdown on them sparked fighting that spread through the south and the capital.
Sadr's masked Mahdi Army militia fighters were no longer to be seen openly brandishing weapons in the street as they had for days.
[The Madhi Army] were looking for an excuse to stop fighting. They don't like facing us because they get killed. US Army Major Mark Cheadle
"We have control of the towns around Basra and also inside the city. There are no clashes anywhere in Basra. Now we are dismantling roadside bombs," said an Iraqi army commander.
In Baghdad, where a three-day curfew was mostly lifted, the truce seemed tenuous at best. Explosions struck the Green Zone government and diplomatic compound in what police said was a volley of six mortar bombs.
The US military also reported clashes in several Baghdad neighbourhoods early today.
"The attacks haven't stopped. There's still a lot of enemy out there, we're not going to quit protecting the populace," said a US army spokesman.
"[The Madhi Army] were looking for an excuse to stop fighting," he said. "They don't like facing us because they get killed."
Sadr City, a sprawling slum that is Sadr's main stronghold and has witnessed some of the worst fighting in the past week, remained sealed off by US and Iraqi troops.