Sadr fighters vanish from Iraq's streets

[bemildred]

Source: AFP

Gun-toting fighters of hardline Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Monday melted from the streets after days of fierce clashes with security forces as a curfew was lifted in Iraq's capital and eased in Basra.

Following six days of intense fighting with security forces, Sadr on Sunday pulled his fighters off the streets, signalling an end to the firefights which have killed more than 320 people across Iraq.

AFP correspondents in Baghdad and Basra said the militants had disappeared on Monday and the fighting which had rocked the two cities and several other Shiite regions since last Tuesday had died down.

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"The militants have disappeared from Sadr City and its neighbouring areas and my information is that Sadr's order is being implemented everywhere," the Baghdad spokesman for Sadr's movement, Salman al-Fraiji, told AFP.

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=223328

Read more: http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=223328

[thereismore]

1. Does this mean that al Maliki has ceded parts of Iraq to al Sadr? nt

[bemildred]

2. You would have to control something in the first place to be able to cede it.

It means al Maliki is toast, I think, but time will tell.

[annabanana]

3. It's showed us who's in charge of the "surge". Al Sadr can come

and go as he pleases. He seems to have tremendous popular support among the Shia.

[Massachusetts]

4. Bingo!

[LynnTheDem]

5. Temporarily.