Iraq on Wednesday marked the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to the US-led occupation forces.
Iraqi officials said three mortar rounds slammed into Sadr City, the east Baghdad stronghold of anti-US Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, killing at least seven people and wounding 24.
One of the three rounds struck the rooftop of a house where a family was having breakfast, killing three members of a family, two of them children.
Clashes in the sprawling Shi’ite district in the early hours killed another six people and wounded at least 15, a medic said.
Sadr City has been wracked by renewed fighting between Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia and US and Iraqi forces since Sunday.
At least 55 people have died and scores more been wounded.
The US military says it is chasing ‘criminals’ who are firing rockets into Baghdad and the heavily fortified Green Zone where the Iraqi government and US embassy are based.
The Iraqi capital’s streets were empty of cars and trucks after the authorities declared a 5.00am to midnight (0200 GMT to 2100 GMT) vehicle curfew to prevent car bomb attacks by insurgents on the anniversary of the country’s fall to US invading forces.
Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, was also under a day-long curfew.
Al-Sadr had last week called for a million-strong anti-American demonstration in Baghdad on Wednesday but cancelled it on Tuesday ‘to save Iraqi blood.’
A statement issued by the office of Moqtada al-Sadr said that it was decided to postpone the one-million demonstration until further notice.
The statement said that Sadr expressed his fear for the safety of the demonstrators from the coercive measures the Iraqi government wants to take against them and called on all people who want to stage a demonstration to postpone it.
The statement called on the Iraqi government to protect all components of the Iraqi people from sectarianism, partisanship and occupation and to provide services as well.
The statement added that if the government fails to do so, Al-Mahdi Army is ready to end the freeze imposed on its activities more than seven months ago to carry out these tasks.
The statement also called on the puppet police and army forces to stand by the residents of the besieged areas and provide assistance and support for them.
It took US invading forces three weeks to defeat the Iraqi army on April 9, 2003.
On that day, US Marines put a rope around the neck of a giant statue of Saddam in Baghdad’s Firdoos Square, pulling it down in an act that symbolised the fall of Baghdad.
Five years later the American military and Baghdad’s new puppet Maliki regime are still battling in a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and displaced more than four million.
More than 700 people have been killed in a fortnight of clashes between Mahdi Army militiamen and Iraqi and US forces in Baghdad, the southern port city of Basra and other Shi’ite regions.
Fears of an upsurge in the violence are running deep after Sadr, angered by attacks on his militiamen, threatened on Tuesday to end the truce his feared Mahdi Army militia has been observing since August.
US commanders had claimed that the ceasefire was one of the factors behind a sharp drop in violence across Iraq in the second half of last year.
Although US President Bush insisted in March that toppling Saddam was the ‘right decision’, his commanders are finding it difficult to bring ‘stability’ to Iraq despite last year’s strategy of ‘surging’ an extra 30,000 troops.
The top US general in Iraq, David Petraeus, urged in testimony to the US Congress on Tuesday that further withdrawals of troops should be held off for at least 45 days after completing the withdrawal of the surge forces by July.
Petraeus said the surge had helped make ‘significant but uneven’ progress in Iraq, while Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker warned that those achievements were ‘reversible.’
For Iraqis, the five years since the US-led invasion has been a period of turmoil and bloodletting.
‘Since then it has become a nightmare of suffering and destruction,’ said Sarah Yussef, 25.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians since the US-led invasion.
Between 104,000 and 223,000 people died from March 2003 to June 2006 alone, according to the World Health Organisation.
Other estimates put the figure at over 600,000 dead.
Iraqis, US and allied forces also face daily attacks from insurgents and militants, and fighting continues between different Iraqi factions.
More than 4,200 US and allied soldiers have also lost their lives in the conflict.
‘Down with Bush’ chants are a frequent background to daily violence.
In the United States, the war is deeply unpopular and has emerged as one of the key factors in this year’s presidential elections.
Majeed Hameed, a gift shop owner in Baghdad’s northern Antar Square, said the American tanks rolling on the streets of Baghdad are seen as ‘enemy’ forces.
‘We can’t describe how savage these barbarians are, whose promises were false and full of lies.
‘They came to occupy and cause destruction. We got nothing but disaster,’ said Hameed.
‘Five years of suffering are enough. I think it is really enough for us to understand that they (the US) must leave and not return.
‘We should understand that they destroyed us. They looted us.’