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Fighting in Baghdad as Iraq marks Saddam's fall

AFP, Baghdad
Iraq yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted regime with the nation still in turmoil, the capital under curfew and a surge of deadly violence in the Shia bastion of Sadr City.
Iraqi officials said three mortar rounds slammed into Sadr City, the eastern Baghdad stronghold of anti-American Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, killing at least seven people and wounding24 others.
One mortar round struck the rooftop of a house where a family was having breakfast, killing three members of a family, including two children.
Another mortar struck a nearby tent set up for a condolence service for a person killed earlier in the week, while a third fell on an empty plot.
Clashes in the sprawling Shia district in the early hours killed
another six people and wounded at least 15, a medical official said.
Sadr City has been wracked by fighting since Sunday between Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and US and Iraqi forces in which at least 55 people have died and scores have been wounded.
The US military says it is chasing "criminals" firing rockets into Baghdad and the heavily fortified Green Zone where die Iraqi govern -ment and US embassy are sited.
Sadr had last week called for a million-strong anti American demonstration in Baghdad to mark the anniversary of Saddam's ouster by US invading forces but cancelled it on Tuesday "to save Iraqi blood."
Baghdad's streets were empty of cars and trucks after die authorities declared a 5:00 am to midnight (0200 GMT to 2100 GMT) vehicle curfew to prevent car bomb attacks bySunni insurgents.
Saddam's hometown of Tikrit
was also under a day-long curfew, an Al l’ correspondent said.
It took US invading forces just three weeks to defeat Saddam's forces and topple his regime 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 the dictator's brutal regime.
A jubilant Iraqi crowd "insulted" the fallen statue by smacking its face with their shoes.
But five years later the American military and Baghdad's new Shia-led regime arc still battling to curb the bloodshed that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than four million.
Fears of an uptick in the violence are running deep after hardline Sadr, angered by attacks on his militiamen, threatened on Tuesday to end the truce his feared Mahdi Army militia has been observing
since Au gust.
US commanders acknowledge 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 George W. 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 "surge" strategy of deploying an extra 30,000 troops.
The top US general in Iraq, David Petraeus, urged in testimony to the US Congress on Tuesday that further troop withdrawals should be held off for at least 45 days after completing the pullout 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."