Mixed Baghdad neighborhood now firmly controlled by Shiite radicals

The Associated Press

Teenage gunmen from the Mahdi Army militia patrol the streets. Shops abandoned by Sunni Muslims are reopening under Shiite Muslim operators. Slurs scrawled on Sunni homes are being scrubbed off, and Shiite families moving in. Formerly Sunni mosques, including some attacked or bombed last fall, are either closed or repaired and redecorated in the Shiite tradition for their new worshippers. This is Hurriyah today. Hurriyah is mostly quiet these days, guarded by young men of the Mahdi Army or its splinter groups, according to an Associated Press reporter who lives in the neighborhood and whose name has been withheld from this story for security reasons. Journalists can be killed for recording the militia's activities...

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