US army stops patrols in Baghdad's powderkeg Shiite suburb

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Gee. What a difference 24 hours can make.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030816/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_us_baghdad_shiite&cid=1514&ncid=1473

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The US military has stopped patrols in Baghdad's Sadr City district after an incident there that many residents of the vast and impoverished suburb saw as an assault on their Shiite Muslim faith, police said.

"They stopped patrolling here after Wednesday's incident," Iraqi police Colonel Maruf Omran, head of the area's Al-Habibia police station, told AFP Saturday.

An American soldier, who asked not to be named, at a US base on the edge of the district formerly known as Saddam City confirmed all patrols there had been cancelled.

An Iraqi was killed in Wednesday's clashes, sparked when US troops in a helicopter removed a religious flag from a communications tower in the predominantly Shiite district.

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