Basra crawls back to normal after ceasefire

Basra: Residents buried their dead after quiet returned to the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Monday, but clashes continued in Baghdad despite a truce to end a week of violence.

Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr called his fighters off the streets on Sunday, nearly a week after Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki launched a crackdown on them, sparking fighting that spread through the south and the capital.

Life slowly returned to normal in Basra where Al Sadr's masked Mahdi Army fighters were no longer to be seen openly brandishing weapons in the street as they had for days.

Shops began to reopen. Authorities said schools would reopen today. Residents hosed down the hulks of burnt-out cars and drove with coffins in their trunks carrying the unburied dead.

Underlying rift

"We have control of the towns around Basra and also inside the city. There are no clashes anywhere in Basra. Now we are dismantling roadside bombs," said Major-General Mohammad Jawan Huweidi, commander of the Iraqi Army's 14th division.

The government portrayed the crackdown as an attempt to assert state authority in a lawless city. Militia have fought for control of Basra, which controls 80 per cent of Iraq's oil revenues but Al Sadr's followers saw the offensive as an attempt to sideline them ahead of provincial elections in October.

The truce may have eased the fighting, but it did little to resolve the underlying rift splitting Iraq's Shiite majority.

"I don't think any party can claim victory," said Mustafa Alani, analyst at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Centre. "Sadr asked his followers to move away from the streets but he is not asking them to disarm. It came out of an agreement, not defeat."