It looks like the ceasefire is off. After nearly seven months of standing down,  Shiite hardline fighters from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army clashed with Iraqi security forces in Basra today. The reaction in Baghdad was almost immediate: the Green Zone was pounded with mortars or rockets throughout the day and at least one office of the rival Badr organization was torched. Clashes were also reported in Kut and a handful of smaller cities in the Shia-dominated south. By sundown, a curfew was in place in Basra, Kut, Hilla, Diwaniya and Sadr City to keep the violence from spreading.

The fighting comes as little surprise. For months, there has been a tense standoff in Basra between the Mahdi fighters loyal to cleric al-Sadr, the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq (ISCI) and the Fadhila party, an offshoot of the Sadrists. They have carefully carved out their turf: the Mahdi fighters have infiltrated the police force, the ISCI  Shiites control a handful of posts on the local governorate council and the Fadhila party holds the Basra governor post and dominates the security forces which protect the oil fields, Iraq's largest. There are nearly half a dozen smaller militant Shia groups, like Jundallah, who also claim influence in the city. In the past year, the tension between these groups has repeatedly spilled over to street violence. And, after British forces withdrew from their base within Basra last December, it was inevitable that the militias would clash with the Iraqi security forces who replaced them. The latest reports indicate that today's fighting has left at least 15 people dead and dozens more wounded.

Khalid Mohammed / AP
Attack Aftermath: Smoke rises from the Green Zone

By Larry Kaplow

One of the most visible improvements in the security situation here in recent months was the steep, almost total, decrease in insurgent rocket attacks. That lull has now been shattered. As Shiite militias appear be backsliding on a ceasefire dating back to last August, rocket attacks have resumed, taking a deadly and ominous toll.

Multiple rocket barrages reportedly killed about 13 Iraqis in the capital on Sunday—a day that saw an estimated 58 Iraqis and four U.S. soldiers die in a spate of attacks nationwide. The Baghdad rockets were apparently fired toward the Green Zone, which is headquarters for the Iraqi government, the U.S. military and the U.S. embassy. But many somehow fell short and landed in neighborhoods outside the fortified area, killing Iraqis. Inside, as the embassy alarm sounded, two U.S. government employees, including an American citizen and a Jordanian, were seriously wounded, while about six others received medical treatment for lighter wounds, according to an embassy official. He did not know if others not working for the United States were injured.

Rocket attacks are one form of lethal communications by Shiite hardliners; this time they may be signaling that supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr are ready to resume violence to gain more political power. If so, the prize at stake would be local elections expected much later this year. Most governorships and provincial councils in the south are now controlled by the Islamic Dawa Party or the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq (ISCI) simply because these two Shiite groups entered the political process early on. Since then Sadr has become a surging grass-roots phenomenon. His supporters are expected to win seats throughout the south if and when there is a vote. But they worry about the very real possibility that the government parties will stall or rig the elections. Worse, they fear that the government parties could be trying to smash the Sadr movement before the vote.

Those fears were likely strengthened by a series of recent government raids on Sadr offices in the south. The militias may be pushing back. It’s always murky trying to determine whether those fighting are doing so with Sadr’s blessing. But a local newspaper reported Sadr spokesmen threatening a “disobedience” campaign against raids by Iraqi and U.S. forces. That call was for peaceful protest—like closing shops—but in the past Sadr disputes with rival Shiites have seen increased rocket fire at U.S. installations, presumably because the United States is closely allied to the mainstream Shiites. When they fire at the Green Zone, they rattle both the U.S. and Iraqi governments.

 
Wathiq Khuzaie / Getty Images
Residue of Conflict: A bombed building in Baghdad

 He looked more than five years older, his face drawn and his once-considerable belly now barely noticeable. I think I was more thrilled to find him than he was to see me, there on the same street corner where we met in 2003 as American troops were pushing their way toward the capital from southern Iraq. But he did permit himself a crooked grin and to say, "I know you," in his stilted English as he turned toward me from the domino players on the little lip of sidewalk outside his small restaurant. The war years have been tough for Falah Hassan, and things are still too dangerous for an out-in-the-open talk with an American, so he led me back into his empty restaurant for a furtive chat.

The first time I met Hassan, I was talking to people on the street in central Baghdad about the approaching troops. He had joined in a group of men parroting the official line--that Iraq would turn back the invaders, that Saddam Hussein was a great patriot. I was with my Iraqi Ministry of Information minder at the time, and I remembered that Hassan had made a comment curiously open to double entendre, something like, "What else would we say?" About a week later, it was the morning of April 9, and U.S. troops were just outside the city, so close that the ubiquitous secret police were receding from the streets. I still had my minder but the minute Hassan saw me, he smiled and said he could finally speak freely. He told me that he had gone to jail years earlier for dodging the draft during the Iran-Iraq War and his brother had been killed by members of Saddam's extended family. The Marines hadn't set foot downtown yet, but it was at that moment that I knew the regime had truly fallen. I'd see him now and then as I passed his restaurant in my work. I ate there once or twice but then that got too dangerous for foreigners. I walked by one day and noticed him walking through his doorway with a Kalashnikov rifle--something that had become a fairly normal and legal tool of self defense for business owners.

At first glance on a sunny day, Yarmouk Hospital looks like any medical center in the Middle East. But that impression only lasted until a woman in an abaya approached U.S. Army Maj. Amit Bhavsar, the division surgeon of the Second Brigade, 101st Airborne. Bhavsar was in the Baghdad facility to deliver one of a series of talks that he has arranged on topics like facial trauma and burn treatment. But just before he reached the lecture room, the mother showed him her son, a 2-year-old with disfiguring burn scars all over his back, neck and scalp that were causing his hair to grow in uneven patches. She claimed the injury was the result of an unspecified military operation and she begged for Bhavsar's help in getting her child the necessary treatment and medicine. The doctors at the hospital were unable to offer him either.

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These three charts provided to NEWSWEEK by the military last week give a rough idea of how the violence in Iraq today compares to other times during the war. The military still does not attach figures to the charts but it is more forthcoming with comprehensive trends--released in close-to-real-time--than it used to be.

This chart shows that weekly attacks are in a low, nearly four-month plateau with fewer than 600 attacks of all kinds across the country per week. Attacks haven't been down at those levels for a sustained period since about spring 2005 (and they surpassed 1,500 attacks a week back in June of last year), according to the military's information.

This chart shows violent civilian deaths down in January to just above 500 a month, the lowest figure in about two years:

The third shows Iraqi security forces and U.S. military deaths per month--with an uptick for U.S. deaths in January while Iraqi deaths dropped: