U.S. DEATHS
Maliki launched operations against Sadr's militia last month in the southern city of Basra and fighting has spread to Baghdad, where the cleric's Mehdi Army has clashed fiercely with both U.S. and Iraqi troops.
U.S. forces announced on Wednesday that four more American soldiers had died, raising the toll to 15 since an upsurge of fighting began on Sunday. Rockets or mortars, which U.S. forces say are mainly fired from Sadr City, hit the Green Zone compound but caused no injuries, the U.S. embassy said.
The Iraqi parliament's Human Rights Committee warned in a statement of a "tragic situation" in Sadr City, where food and medicine are running short after a two-week blockade.
Vehicle bans were also imposed in Samarra and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown. In Falluja, where members of Saddam's Sunni Arab minority rose up twice against U.S. forces in 2004, several hundred protesters marched calling for American forces to leave.
In Washington, the top two U.S. officials in Iraq testified to members of Congress for a second day.
Military commander General David Petraeus and ambassador Ryan Crocker said Iraq had made progress over the past year, but the improvements were fragile and could be reversed.
Petraeus advised against committing to a timetable for new troop reductions after forces sent last year as part of the so-called surge return home in July.
Petraeus' testimony suggests more than 100,000 U.S. troops will still be in Iraq when the next U.S. president succeeds Bush in January. Republican candidate John McCain opposes a timetable for further troop cuts, while Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to set a timetable to withdraw.
The U.S. State Department said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will go to Bahrain and Kuwait to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Iraq, focusing on ways Iraq's neighbors can participate in Iraq's development.
Rice's first stop will be Bahrain April 21 to meet foreign ministers from the Gulf Cooperation Council as well as Egypt and Jordan, department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
In New York, the Associated Press said that an Iraqi judicial committee has ordered the release of one of its photographers held by the U.S. military in Iraq for two years, and dismissed terrorism-related accusations against him.
The AP said a four-judge panel ruled that the case of Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi, falls under a new amnesty law and ordered Iraqi courts to "cease legal proceedings" and release him.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 4,000 U.S. troops have died in the war. Two million Iraqis have fled the country and about as many are displaced within Iraq.
