Shiite Muslim factions sign Sadr City deal

The signatures put an official seal to a truce brokered over the weekend by Sadr's political representatives and members of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's governing alliance.

Negotiators said they hoped the deal would mark the close of more than seven weeks of fighting in the district, which has claimed hundreds of lives. But it was unclear whether all the groups that have taken up arms in Sadr City would adhere to the accord.

The U.S. military said its troops in the southeastern portion of the district had come under attack at least three times and had killed three gunmen since the deal began to take effect Sunday. Iraqi soldiers had also traded sporadic fire with neighborhood fighters, residents said. The district's two main hospitals had received four bodies and treated 24 wounded since late Sunday, officials said.

Some militia members said they were waiting for orders from Sadr himself before setting aside their weapons. But Sadr's chief negotiator, Salah Obeidi, said Monday that the cleric had issued written instructions authorizing his representatives to sign the deal and urging his followers to uphold it.

The fighting erupted in late March when Maliki's government began a crackdown in the southern oil hub of Basra aimed primarily at Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.

The government said the operation was intended to restore order in the lawless city, which generates most of the country's crucial oil revenue. But Sadr's followers accused factions within Maliki's alliance, one of which also has an armed wing, of using the crackdown to weaken the cleric's movement ahead of provincial elections slated for the fall.

The fighting in Basra subsided in five days, but the crackdown sparked a fierce uprising in Sadr City and other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad that has dragged on for weeks.

The U.S. military says that more than 1,000 rockets and mortar rounds have been fired in Baghdad since late March, most of them from Sadr City. The shelling has killed at least 28 people and injured 257, according to military figures.

Many more have died in the daily exchanges in Sadr City and surrounding areas, where U.S. tanks and attack helicopters trade fire with militants armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.