Thursday night, after a deadly bomb attack in the poor Shi'ite neighborhood, police and aides to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr announced the radical leader's militia, the Mahdi Army, would help government security forces patrol Sadr City.
The government decision to legitimize joint patrols with the Mahdi Army -- which had been going on anyway -- appeared to have tacit US military approval, even though American forces have fought several protracted battles with the Shi'ite fighters for control of southern holy cities and the Sadr City Shi'ite stronghold.
Acceptance of the higher profile for the Mahdi Army, if only for a time, signaled the extreme importance US authorities have put on quelling more than a week of deadly sectarian violence after the Samarra bombing.
The Americans took pains to stay out of the conflict, but there was criticism, nevertheless.
Abdul-Salam Al-Kubaisi, a spokesman for the Sunni clerical Association of Muslim Scholars, suggested US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad might share blame for the violence along with some Shi'ite religious leaders.
Two days before the gleaming dome atop the 1,400-year-old Askariya shrine was bombed, Khalilzad had warned that the United States would not continue to support institutions run by sectarian groups with links to armed militias.
Sunnis accuse Shi'ite militiamen operating in the ranks of the Interior Ministry, which controls the police, of widespread abuses.
The lull in violence yesterday followed a night of carnage in two southeastern Baghdad suburbs, where some 50 gunmen stormed an electricity substation and a brick factory nearby where they slaughtered Shi'ite factory workers in their sleep, police said. The attacks raised Thursday's death toll to 58.
In much of the country yesterday, worshipers walked in peace to mosques to offer prayers and listen to sermons, in which some imams -- both Shi'ite and Sunni -- called for unity and an end to violence.
''There is no difference between Sunni and Shi'ite," Sheik Hadi al-Shawki told Shi'ite worshipers in Amarah. ''We have to unite and not let the terrorists divide us."
