Shiite Muslims

Iraqi officials said Sunday that they had fired about 1,300 soldiers and police officers who refused to fight Shiite Muslim militias during the recent government crackdown, desertions that raise questions about the likely performance of Iraqi forces as U.S. troop levels decrease.

Hard-line Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr threatened "open war" as Iraqi and U.S. forces battled his Mahdi Army militia in two key strongholds Saturday, raising the specter that a truce credited with reducing violence could soon end. The warning was the closest the cleric has come to canceling the truce he called in August, and it coincided with an Iranian denunciation of U.S. airstrikes in support of the Shiite-led government's military offensive.

Clerics and politicians speak in hushed tones about the names drawn up for assassination. Guards stand outside their compounds clutching assault rifles, and handguns rest on desks. No one can be trusted. All sides fear that dark times are coming to Najaf, the spiritual capital of Iraq's Shiite Muslims.

Militants believed to be Shiite Muslims pounded Baghdad's fortified Green Zone and U.S. and Iraqi outposts with rocket or mortar fire Monday, killing at least four American soldiers in some of the fiercest attacks in weeks. The U.S. military said it had used attack helicopters and tanks to repel a wave of assaults in the last two days, killing at least 45 gunmen. Scores of people were injured in the exchanges, many of them bystanders, according to the Iraqi police and hospital officials.

In echoing the Pentagon's latest accusations of Iranian meddling, the Iraqi government has placed itself firmly where it has long said it does not want to be: caught in the middle between Washington and its neighbor to the east. Baghdad says it agrees with the United States that Iran has continued to supply weapons to anti-government militants in southern Iraq, including arms with markings indicating they were produced this year.

Armed clashes Wednesday in the Lebanese capital between supporters of the Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition threatened this divided country's fragile calm. The fighting began with opponents of the government setting tires ablaze to block the city's main roads, notably those leading to the international airport, where flights were suspended.

Lebanon's long-simmering political crisis lurched deeper into violent civil conflict Thursday as bands of Shiite and Sunni gunmen battled in the streets for a second day and politicians took to the airwaves to denounce each other for pushing the country toward war.

The Iraqi government and representatives of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr said Saturday that they had struck a deal to halt weeks of fighting in a Baghdad district. But disagreements over the content of the accord cast doubt on whether it would end the bloodshed. Word of a possible breakthrough came as the Iraqi military announced the start of a long-promised crackdown in the northern city of Mosul, described by the U.S. military as the last urban stronghold of Sunni Arab militants loyal to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Representatives of Iraq's main Shiite Muslim factions signed a deal Monday clearing the way for Iraqi soldiers to operate throughout Sadr City, a vast Baghdad slum that is largely under the control of militiamen loyal to firebrand cleric Muqtada Sadr. 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.

Iraqi Col. Qassim Abdul-Wahab appeared relaxed as he cruised down rutted streets in an unarmored pickup truck, Arabic pop tunes pouring from the speakers and the air conditioner cranked up as high as it would go. For the first time since U.S.-led forces invaded the country in March 2003, Iraqi soldiers blanket Sadr City, the heavily populated Baghdad district that is the bastion of firebrand Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.