BBC:
The authorities in Baghdad say they are preparing for an exodus of thousands of people from eastern parts of the city. Fighting between government and US troops on one side, and Shia militia on the other, has intensified recently.
Two football stadiums are on stand-by to receive residents from two neighbourhoods in the Sadr City area.The government has warned of an imminent push to clear the areas of members of the Mehdi Army, loyal to the anti-American cleric, Moqtada Sadr.
In the last seven weeks around 1,000 people have died, and more than 2,500 others have been injured, most of them civilians.
The fighting so far in Sadr City has been fierce - street to street, and house to house.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is showing a determination to disarm the country's Shia militia groups - particularly the Mehdi Army - that he has never displayed before.
However, Iraqi army operations, backed by US ground and air support, have so far failed to overwhelm the Shia militiamen, who are still responding with roadside bombs, sniper fire, mortars and rockets.The government has distributed leaflets in two key districts of Sadr City, warning people to leave.
The speculation is that government forces are preparing for a big push into eastern Baghdad to end the current fighting once and for all.
Shortages of water and medical supplies have already made life inside Sadr City extremely difficult.
NYT:
Two mortar shells exploded Tuesday morning in the Baghdad municipal building, killing three civilians and wounding 15 people. And a rocket landed in Al Mansour University College, wounding five students, according to an official at the Interior Ministry who asked not to be quoted because he was not authorized to speak on the record.Insurgents often fire mortar shells and rockets toward the Green Zone, headquarters of the Iraqi government and American Embassy, but their misses often harm civilians.
In the Shaula neighborhood, a Sadrist stronghold in western Baghdad, Iraqi forces captured several dozen police officers who were believed to be aiding militia fighters. Some of the officers were captured in a local hospital, which was believed to have been caring for militia fighters, according to a deputy of Qassim Atta, the military spokesman for the Baghdad security plan.
Families have begun to leave Sadr City over the past several days, trickling into the grounds of a sports stadium in Baladiat, which is on the western edge of Sadr City. The families, who lived near the front lines of the fighting and the wall being built by the American military to partition the neighborhood, said they had fled because their children were terrified of the bombing.
As many as 1,500 families are expected to go to the area in the next few days, said Abu Wa'il, the informal mayor of the refugees who live in the area. Some came as recently as two days ago and others have been there for several years, squatting in abandoned buildings. The army will provide tents for the refugees, he said, but there appeared to be no latrines and it seemed doubtful that there would be enough water to supply so many families.
In Tikrit, a car bomb exploded in midafternoon, killing two civilians and wounding 26 people, including four policemen. A curfew was in effect on Tuesday evening.
In Nineveh, an American soldier died after his patrol was attacked on Tuesday, the military said in a statement. In a separate incident in the province, Sunni extremists killed three Iraqi women and wounded two others in an attack on Monday, according to a statement from the American military. The local police said the extremists were members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the statement said.
AFP also reports:' On the political front, an Iraqi lawmaker whose party is loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, resigned on Tuesday protesting the violence in Baghdad's Sadr City where street battles claim a daily death toll.
"I announce the suspension of my membership in protest at what is happenning in Sadr city," Hassan Al-Rubaie said. "The religious and political leaderships in Iraq are responsible for the violations that happen in Sadr City."He acted even as President Jalal Talabani made a fresh appeal to the militia to lay down its arms and allow essential supplies to get into the Sadr City, parliamentary officials said.'
I take away from these grafs that Iraqi politics is in danger of collapsing. Not that many members of parliament come to the sessions, and if you start having any number of resignations, even getting a quorum may be difficult. There doesn't seem to be a mechanism for holding by-elections, so the seat that was resigned will probably remain empty until the next parliamentary elections.
Also, President Talabani's statement unwittingly reveals that essential supplies are not getting into Sadr City and suggests that al-Maliki and the US are holding the civilian population hostage as a way of putting pressure on the Mahdi Army.
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