The Baghdad neighbourhood of Sadr City appears calm on the first day of a ceasefire between the Iraqi government and Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr.
The authorities reported no violence on Sunday as gunmen withdrew from the streets and shops reopened.
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The truce came as army troops began a major operation in northern Iraq against al-Qaeda and its allies.
Under the agreement announced on Saturday, Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army militiamen are to lay down their weapons and remove snipers and bombs from roads leading into Sadr City.
Cautious welcome
The government says the truce will enable them to deliver aid and food to residents of the impoverished Baghdad neighbourhood.
More than two million people have been trapped by the fighting as US and Iraqi forces have attempted to disarm Shia militants in the area.
Nearly 1,000 people are believed to have been killed in the fighting, many of them civilians, and access to water, food and medical supplies has been difficult.
Many residents have welcomed the accord.
"We want the problems in this city to be solved. We welcome any effort whether from the Sadrist Movement or the United Alliance [government] to solve the crisis in Sadr City," one resident, Khalid Jabbar, told the Associated Press news agency.
Others were sceptical that the truce would hold. Adil Itabi said he had moved his family away from the area to escape the violence.
"I am not going to rush them back because I am not convinced the peace will stick. The government and the Mehdi Army are so opposed, this deal could fail at any moment," he told Reuters.
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki wants to completely disarm Shia militias - including the Mehdi Army - before local elections in October.
But the ceasefire may also reflect the fact that the Iraqi army may need the troops committed to the Baghdad fighting to join the new offensive in the northern city of Mosul against al-Qaeda militants, says the BBC's Clive Myrie in Baghdad.
Battles on multiple fronts may still be too difficult for the Iraqi army, our correspondent says.
(BBC)
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