Tension eased in two Iraqi flashpoint cities today as a truce held in the Sunni bastion of Falluja and US forces prepared to pull back from a base near Najaf, where a rebel Shia cleric is holed up.
Witnesses said civilians who had fled battles between US troops and Sunni rebels trickled back to Falluja on foot, although vehicles were turned back at checkpoints.
Some shops reopened and some Iraqi police returned to duty. There was no sign of US forces in central parts of the city.
Thousands of Iraqis had left Falluja, west of Baghdad, to escape fierce clashes in which hundreds of civilians and dozens of US soldiers were killed earlier this month.
The returnees were venturing back a day after the US military said it would not resume offensive operations in Falluja on condition rebels give up their heavy weapons.
US forces also gave Iraqi mediators more time to resolve a standoff with Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia in the holy city of Najaf, south of the capital.
General Ricardo Sanchez, commanding US forces in Iraq, told his soldiers that he was pulling them back to avoid bloodshed in Najaf or damage to shrines sacred to Shias in Iraq and beyond.
US forces launched a crackdown in Falluja on April 5th after crowds burned and mutilated the corpses of four US private security guards ambushed there on March 31st.