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Baghdad remains tense after four-day curfew lifted

The Iraqi capital sprung to life yesterday after a four-day curfew to thwart violence after a provocative attack on a Shiite shrine to the north, as a top US general acknowledged that security forces have full control in only 40 percent of the city.

Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno's assessment came as a US-Iraqi effort to pacify Baghdad entered its fifth month, with 30,000 additional US troops now in place. But the city has so far seen little improvement in overall violence, and a tense political standoff was under way between the US-backed government and Shiite lawmakers who suspended their participation in parliament.

Traffic clogged the capital's main thoroughfares for the first time in several days, after a four-day vehicle ban imposed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after Wednesday's suspected al-Qaeda bombing of the minarets at the Askariya shrine in Samarra.

Lines of vehicles snaked around the block where gas stations had been shut for days and vendors spread fresh vegetables across wooden stands in bustling wholesale markets. Packed buses motored slowly over bridges spanning the Tigris River.

Odierno said US troops launched a new offensive in the Arab Jabour and Salman Pac neighborhoods of Baghdad on Friday night. It was the first time in three years that US soldiers had entered those areas, where al-Qaeda militants build car bombs and launch Katyusha rockets at US military bases and Shiite Muslim neighborhoods.

The overall US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said during a news conference held on Saturday with visiting US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that the operation would put troops into key al-Qaeda-held territories surrounding Baghdad.

Elsewhere, a car bomb killed two Kurdish security agents yesterday morning in the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, police said.

The security agents were traveling in a civilian car through downtown Kirkuk when a bomb in a parked car exploded next to their vehicle, said police Brigadier Sarhat Qadir.

Three pedestrians were injured, he said.
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