There is something different about the annual Muslim holiday of Eid ul-Fitr in Baghdad this year.

The odd car bomb and gunshot still rocks the festivities, but families are finally venturing into once no-go areas to visit relatives they have not seen since 2004 or 2005, when a flare-up of sectarian violence began.

In al-Salakh, a Sunni neighbourhood in north Baghdad that sits next to a Shia district, an 83-year-old woman greeted one of her daughters for the first time in three years. Three other middle-aged daughters were also present, smiling broadly.

“I missed my daughters terribly,” Badrya said, her face a patchwork of wrinkles, framed by a pair of large glasses. “They stopped coming to visit because of the danger. Seeing them today has made me feel as though I am flying. I am so happy.”

One of the women, Um Khalid, 50, lives in New Baghdad, a once-notorious Shia area. She had been too scared to visit her mother because Sunni gunmen who controlled Salakh regarded Sunnis living in Shia districts with suspicion.

New Baghdad was also a scene of ferocious clashes between the al-Mahdi Army, the largest Shia militia in Iraq, and the US military. Sunni Arab families were singled out by Shia gunmen and scores of them were killed.

Like thousands of other Sunni Arabs in Baghdad, Badrya and her extended family spent yesterday catching up and eating popular Iraqi dishes such as barbecued carp, baked chicken, rice and stuffed vegetables.

Eid ul-Fitr follows the holy month of Ramadan, when many Muslims fast from dawn until dusk. Sunni Arabs celebrate the start of the three-day holiday one or two days before Iraq's majority Shia Arabs, though the whole country is taking advantage of the vacation, which is seen as a chance for relatives to pay each other a visit.

At the height of the sectarian crisis, when hundreds of Iraqis were dying each month, people chose to stay in their own homes rather than socialise, keeping in touch with other family members only by phone.

A crackdown over the past 18 months by US and Iraqi forces, however, coupled with other factors such as a ceasefire by the al-Mahdi Army and a decision by many Sunni Arab fighters to side with the US military against al-Qaeda, mean that violence is at its lowest level for four years.

The relative calm, contained by blast walls and the heavy presence of Iraqi police and soldiers on the streets, is emboldening families to travel more.

Ammar al-Kaisey, a 20-year-old businessman, lives with his wife and children in a Sunni Arab section of Doura, to the south, once the hub of al-Qaeda activity in Baghdad. He and his family went to see his mother on the other side of Doura, the first time they had made the trip in two years.

In the afternoon he rewarded his son and daughter, aged 2 and 3, with a trip to a park that nestles along the side of the Tigris river. Parents typically take their children to the park or the zoo during the holiday.

Mr al-Kaisey said: “I had to come to the park today, despite the risk, because I wanted my children to have some fun.”

A car bomb exploded earlier in the afternoon outside the National Theatre in the central Baghdad district of Karrada. Three people were killed and six injured in the blast, which threw up a cloud of black smoke, an unwelcome reminder that dangers persist.

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