Baghdad’s Shiite slum, home to 2 million, once backed the American presence. Now more insurgents die there than in southern Iraq. The neighborhoods of Baghdad’s worst slum are draped in black. Scores of mourning banners bearing the names of those killed in recent weeks hang from fences, balconies and buildings along Sadr City’s dusty, garbage-strewn streets. One banner laments a son killed “defending his country.” Some bear photographs of the dead. A few have two, three, even four names squeezed onto them. As Iraqi and U.S. leaders focus on ending the bloodshed in the southern holy cities of Najaf, Kufa and Karbala, Baghdad’s backyard is quietly boiling over. U.S. military officials estimate that they have killed more than 800 Iraqis in Sadr City over the past nine weeks — more than a dozen a day — in battles with the Al Mahdi army, the militia of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr. That’s more than twice the number hospitals estimate were killed in similar fighting in southern Iraq. Full Story