Iraq's prime minister eases security around Sadr City

Adjust font size:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. and Iraqi checkpoints around Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad were being opened Tuesday with vehicles passing through unchecked, following an order by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the U.S. military said.

The order for all the entrances of Sadr City to reopen by 5 p.m. (9 a.m. ET) came after a strike ordered by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr shut down the sprawling Shiite slum Monday.

Most shops, schools and government buildings were closed for the day to protest the checkpoints, some of which have paralyzed traffic across the capital over the past week. (Watch residents sound off about checkpoints -- 1:49)

By 10 p.m. ET, the status of each and every checkpoint was unclear, and Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, spokesman for the U.S. 4th Infantry Division emphasized to CNN that the checkpoints were not being dismantled.

U.S. and Iraqi troops imposed checkpoints at the main entrance to Sadr City, while conducting raids in their search for an American soldier kidnapped in central Baghdad on October 23.

Sadr City also is where a bomb exploded near a market, killing at least 26 people and wounding 60 on Monday. (Full story)

Tough measures, such as checkpoints, should not be imposed except during Baghdad's daily overnight curfew hours and during emergencies, al-Maliki said.

Checkpoints that had already been in place before the crackdown in Sadr City will remain, an Interior Ministry spokesman told CNN.

The White House disagreed with the characterization that the removal of checkpoints was a setback for the United States.

"To deal with checkpoints does not necessarily change the situation in terms of how you deal with Sadr City," White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

Al-Maliki didn't say, "`Let's not continue going after terrorist organizations,' " Snow emphasized.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said while disagreement appears to exist about the checkpoints, "Iraq is a sovereign country, and U.S. military operations are in support of the Iraqi government and in support of Iraq forces," The Associated Press reported.

Attack on wedding party kills 15

A car bomb exploded near a wedding party convoy, killing 15 people and wounding 19 others in the northeastern Baghdad neighborhood of Ur on Tuesday afternoon.

The dead, which included women and children, were among 27 killed in several attacks Tuesday.

North of Baghdad, gunmen on Tuesday kidnapped at least 40 people, a Defense Ministry spokesman said. The people were in 16 cars near Tarmiya, a town 35 miles north of the capital, when the incident occurred around noon. Most of the cars were headed from Balad to Baghdad, the official said.

In other incidents, a car bomb exploded in a busy eastern Baghdad neighborhood, killing three people and wounding 10 others, police said. An hour later, a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi police patrol in the southern neighborhood of Dora, killing a police officer and wounding three colleagues, police said. Gunmen also killed a family of three in the same neighborhood.

In addition, police recovered 10 bullet-riddled bodies in various Baghdad neighborhoods on Monday and five bullet-riddled bodies in restive Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad.

Diyala province was also where five people were gunned down -- three in separate incidents in Baquba; and a man and his sister, as they walked down the street in Khan Bani Saad, police said.

U.S. report finds thousands of weapons missing

Neither U.S. nor Iraqi officials were able to account for the whereabouts of thousands of small-arms weapons intended for use by Iraqi security forces, according to a U.S. government report. In addition, not enough spare parts or repair manuals for many of the weapons had been ordered, the report found.

The audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction also found the accuracy of weapons inventories maintained by the Multi-National Security Transition Command "questionable" for three of the 12 types of weapons bought. (Watch what a report says about half a million weapons in Iraq gone missing -- 1:31 )

Finally, serial numbers were registered for only about 10,000 of the more than 370,000 weapons -- or about 2.7 percent of the total -- bought with the Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Fund, the report said.

The absence of such data "does not necessarily mean that the weapons are missing," said Ginger Cruz, deputy inspector for Iraq reconstruction. "It means that there are not sufficient records within the Iraqi Interior and Defense ministries to locate the weapons."

Other developments

A witness testifying at Saddam Hussein's trial Tuesday described how he feigned death to survive, when Iraqi soldiers massacred Kurdish prisoners in April 1988, AP reported. (Full story)

A coalition raid on al Qaeda in Iraq on Tuesday killed five "terrorists armed with AK-47's" and the detention of a "suspected terrorist" in Baghdad, the U.S. military said. It added that nine weapons were recovered at the scene, and that women and children were in the targeted building but were not injured or detained.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in the Baghdad area, bringing the American troop death to 103, the fourth highest monthly level in the more than three-and-a-half years since the Iraq war began in March 2003. There have been 2,816 U.S. military fatalities in the Iraq war, including seven American military contractors.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday he may approve an increase in the size of Iraq's security forces, which number 310,000, AP reported. He would not say what has been proposed, or how much money would be required. But the U.S. government has spent $10 billion on developing Iraq's security forces, according to a report by the Pentagon special inspector general, AP said. (Watch why the U.S. is looking at beefing up Iraqi forces -- 1:32

)

CNN's Jamie McIntyre, Arwa Damon, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Erin McLaughlin and Ingrid Formanek contributed to this report.