Fighting raged in Baghdad’s main Shia militia stronghold today, while the deaths of 10 American soldiers in a variety of attacks over a three-day period served as a sobering reminder of the cost of the war to US lawmakers reviewing their involvement in Iraq in Washington.

With another 12 Iraqis killed in a third day of heavy clashes in Sadr City, the bulwark of the Mahdi Army, aides to the movement’s leader, Hojestoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr warned the freeze on the Shia militia’s activities could be lifted unless security forces pull back.

The threat came just a day after al-Sadr raised the possibility of disbanding the grassroots militia if senior Shia clerics in Iraq and Iran advised him to do so. The vacillation between threats and olive branches may reflect the confusion in the Sadrist leadership, which is being politically sidelined by an alliance of Iraqi parties and attacked by security forces.

At the same time, the movement announced it was cancelling a planned “million-man march” in Baghdad tomorrow, which had been designed to protest about the continued presence of around 160,000 troops in Iraq exactly five years to the day since the fall of the capital.

“I call upon the Iraqi people to postpone the march. I am afraid for them. I want to save Iraqi blood,” the rebel cleric, now in Iran, said in a statement.

The government had earlier announced that the march could take place, albeit amid armed clashes between militia and US and Iraqi forces in Sadr City. It had however announced a ban on all males aged 18 to 35 entering the capital to avoid Sadrist supporters from massing there.

The heavy fighting and increasing threats to the stability gained in the US “surge” of the past year have come as the Iraqi government tries to crack down on the Mahdi Army and other extremists Shia militia groups, in particular in Basra, where an offensive last month sparked street battles across the south and in the capital.

The high US death toll reflects the intensity of that drive, mirroring a similar bloody spike a year ago when the US military went after Sunni insurgent groups north of Baghdad.

Two of the soldiers killed died in a rocket attack on the fortified Green Zone in the city centre, the governmental compound that has been hit by more than 50 mortars and missiles fired from Sadr City in the past week.

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