BAGHDAD — An unfamiliar sound echoed Saturday on the streets of Sadr City, where gunshots and bomb blasts had rung out for weeks: cars honking their horns.
Traffic clogged the Baghdad district's Mudafer Square, which in recent days had been devoid of life except for Iraqi and American Humvees, rooftop snipers and a giant mural of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's late father staring down from a burned-out building. A squat veiled woman balanced a sagging valise on her head, metal workers cut new billboards, and beggars sat in the middle of the pavement. A teenager in a plastic yellow apron sold glasses of root beer to the crowd.
The night before, 13 people had died in fighting between the U.S. military and Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, the military reported. The Iraqi army had warned that bombs were buried in the streets, and fighters vowed to battle to the death.
But people had been cooped up in their homes for days and needed to get out. Although barbed wire and gun towers sealed off most entries to the district, the U.S. military opened a few roads to vehicles Saturday for the first time since late March.
Signs of the recent fighting were everywhere. Rusty yellow Iraqi tanks had rolled up Fallah Street, one of Sadr City's main avenues, in an unprecedented foray. The soldiers, wearing ski masks to hide their identities, sat beneath a billboard for Gauloise cigarettes that boasted the slogan, in French, "Freedom always." Not far from Sadr's main office, buildings were scarred by bullet holes. Black flags of mourning were staked in dirt plots, a reminder of those lost in nearly three weeks of fighting.
The standoff began March 25 when the Shiite-led Iraqi government launched a military campaign in the southern port of Basra, which sparked a revolt by the Mahdi Army against Iraqi forces. It quickly spread to Sadr City, home to 2.5 million people, and other parts of Baghdad. The Sadr office here estimates that 200 people have died in the fighting in Sadr City.
Some pedestrians expressed anger toward the Iraqi government and others toward the Mahdi Army. All recounted how they had dodged daily airstrikes by the U.S. military and gunfire from rooftop snipers.
Ayad Felah Hassan, 44, finally got out of Sadr City on Saturday. He had been penned in his house for days, and he didn't know how long this respite might last.
