The death toll mounted today in the Iraqi capital Baghdad as US and British forces supported an Iraqi government crackdown on militants loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
More than 200 people have been reported killed in the five days of fighting across southern Iraq and Baghdad since Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched a crackdown on Mr al Sadr's followers in the southern city of Basra.
US forces today said they had killed 48 militants yesterday in gun battles and air strikes across Baghdad.
In one strike in northwestern Baghdad last night, a US helicopter fired a missile killing 10 militants at a checkpoint. In a later incident, soldiers on patrol returned fire after an attack, killing nine.
At least 75 people have been killed and more than 450 wounded in the clashes and US air strikes in Sadr City - a vast slum in suburban Baghdad which is Mr Al Sadr's base - the health directorate in the area said.
The two hospitals which serve the 2 million people of Sadr City are overflowing and understaffed, and a ring of Iraqi and US forces surround the area making it impossible to evacuate the wounded.
Salah al-Ubaidi, a senior aide to Mr al Sadr said his representatives had met Iraq's highest Shi'ite religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in an effort to end the violence.
The influential Ayatollah rarely intervenes in politics. His spokesman in Beirut declined to comment on the reported meeting but an al Sadr aide said Ayatollah Sistani wanted the conflict to end.
His views, if made public, would carry authority among Shi'ites in both Mr al Sadr's movement and in the political parties that support Mr Maliki.
Later, and aide to Mr al-Sadr said the religious leader has rejected a demand by the Iraqi government that his followers hand in their weapons in exchange for cash.
The conflict exposes a deep rift within Iraq's majority Shi'ite community, between the political parties in Mr Maliki's government who control the security forces and Mr Sadr's followers who in many areas rule the streets.
Washington says the crackdown shows the Iraqi government is serious about imposing its authority and is capable of acting independently. But so far government forces have failed to drive Mr al Sadr's Mehdi Army fighters from the streets.
But in Basra, where the main fighting has raged for days, witnesses said warplanes from the US-British coalition had bombed for a second successive day.
The strikes require US or British teams on the ground to direct them, indications that Western involvement has been growing in what so far has been an Iraqi-led operation.
A main British force of 4,100 troops, which pulled out of Basra in December, has remained on a base outside Iraq's second city.
Iraqi commanders say they have killed 120 fighters. But masked Mehdi Army gunmen from walk openly in the streets, firing mortars and brandishing rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers.
Fighting has spread to other towns across the south. There were clashes on the western outskirts of Kerbala, one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest cities. The Iraqi commander in the province said his forces had killed 21 "outlaws" and arrested 50 others.
Mehdi Army have also seized the main streets of Nassyria where around 15 people were killed. Among other cities that have been hit by clashes are Kut, Hilla, Amara and Kerbala.