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BRIANNA
KEILAR: Surrounded and bombarded by U.S. and Iraqi
troops for weeks now, Sadr City has been ground zero
in the military struggle against hardcore Shiite
fighters. Civilians were trapped, with movement next
to impossible, but our Michael Ware managed to get
the ultimate insider's view. This is an exclusive
tour with the Mehdi army militia.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They
called it the siege of Sadr City.
(on camera) You can hear the sound of the gunfire
now. We're being signaled to cross the street.
(voice-over) For almost 50 days until a weekend
cease-fire agreement, two million people were
virtually encircled in this Baghdad slum by U.S. and
Iraqi troops targeting Mehdi army militia fighters.
It was with those Mehdi army fighters that we visited
the besieged Sadr City in the combat's last days.
They wouldn't let us show their faces, but with this
rare access, we could gauge the conflict for
ourselves.
(on camera) What we're seeing now is a blast wall
just recently erected by the Americans to separate
parts of Sadr City. It's down here that the Americans
say many of the rockets fired at the Green Zone are
launched and that's why they're trying to seal it
off.
(voice-over) The fighting has mauled this
neighborhood.
(on camera) So 11 people are supported by the income
he makes from this shop and you can see the
destruction all through it. The bullet holes have
absolutely peppered it, passing from one side down
there, through the shop. And you can see how this
wall is absolutely riddled, even this barrel, full of
bullet holes.
And it fits the street behind me: destroyed cars,
bombed buildings. This is very much the front line in
Sadr City.
(voice-over) Sadr City is a bastion for loyalists of
anti-American cleric Muqtada al Sadr, his Mehdi army
the focus of a government military offensive
cautiously backed by the U.S. military. Al Sadr's
religious and military leaders claim up to 1,000
people have died in less than seven weeks. Impossible
to say how many were combatants, how many were
civilians. Others are homeless with food and medical
supplies running short.
Yet, 24 hours before the peace accord, the skirmishes
continued.
(on camera) You can smell the cordite in the air
right now from the gun shots, they're that close.
We're in a safe zone right now. We're out of the
direct line of fire, but we're very, very close to a
clash that's underway as we speak.
(voice-over) This family's neighbor's house was
pummeled by U.S. bombs.
(on camera) One week ago, the house here was
destroyed.
(voice-over) This man survived that bombing but says
11 of his family did not. "We want the siege of the
city to finish," he says. And though the siege has
eased for now with the weekend's tentative
cease-fire, on Friday, the wounded were still
descending upon Sadr City Hospital. And the week's
dead, including a 12-year-old boy, were awaiting
collection.
Meanwhile, thousands gathered for Friday prayers at
the mosque, chanting, "Long live al Sadr. The Mehdi
army is victorious." To many, like this Sadrist
parliamentarian, the military offensive is a bid by
Shia rivals to undermine al Sadr before local
elections.
"The provincial elections are the target of this
operation," he says, "because the provincial winners
will impose or reject Federalism" -- a suspicion U.S.
commanders share. Few want the Iraqi government
dragging them into a street fight in a Sadr City
teeming with a hostile population.
(on camera) If American troops do have to enter these
streets, the concern, a top American officer told me,
is that the fight could be like Mogadishu.
(voice-over) But even before the cease-fire was
struck, on Friday, al Sadr's top aide in Sadr City
laid out the terms, telling me the Mehdi army would
allow Iraqi army units -- not American -- to enter
the slum, while the militia would maintain its right
of self-defense, a right it vigorously exercises. Its
forces dominate each intersection, its members
disciplined and well organized. And with calls for
the Mehdi army's disbandment now dropped, they may be
even stronger than before.
Michael Ware, CNN, Sadr City.