Baghdad, Iraq - Iraq ordered the deployment of tanks on the streets of Baghdad as the capital crawled back to normalcy following a week of sectarian killings.
Iraqi authorities lifted the tough security measures such as daytime curfew slapped on the city following a civil war threat but ordered the deployment of Iraqi military tanks in certain regions of Baghdad, a top official said.
General Abdel Aziz Mohammed, chief of operations at the defence ministry said the government had also ordered soldiers to arrest anyone carrying weapons illegally, adding the decision to dispatch tanks was taken on Sunday.
It was not immediately known in what part of the capital the tanks were being deployed or if their deployment had begun.
In the aftermath of the sectarian riots that broke out last week, Defence Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi had revealed that military tanks could be deployed if needed, while Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari had banned carrying weapons without a permit.
Monday's relative tranquility in the capital was, however, broken by the death of four people when rebels fired mortars in a predominantly Shiite neighbourhood which also wounded 14.
Both road traffic and pedestrians were back on the streets of Baghdad Monday after a two-day curfew and a 24-hour vehicle ban imposed in the wake of intercommunal violence triggered by the bombing of the Shiite shrine in the northern town of Samarra on Wednesday.
Officials say that at least 120 people died in the ensuing bloodshed.
Even as the day-time curfew was lifted, a three-hour extension to the usual seven-hour night curfew will continue for the time being in Baghdad and the three central provinces of Salaheddin, Babil and Diyala, officials said.
But the lurking fear of last week's sectarian killings continued be felt as people hesitated to send their children to schools.
"Fear is still the master of the situation," said Ali Adnan, a 27-year-old Sunni engineer whose father was briefly kidnapped amid Shiite reprisals against Sunnis.
Adnan Ali, a 40-year-old Kurdish teacher, who lives in a Shiite majority neighbourhood of northeast Baghdad, said he saw armed men roaming the streets, raiding homes and shooting in the air at the start of the trouble.
"There was no police. Everyone was terrified," he said.
"Fewer than a quarter of students returned to school today because of fears of a possible new outbreak in violence," he said.
Iraq's national security adviser, Muwaffak al-Rubaie, announced that 10 people, including four security guards, have been arrested in connection with the investigation into the bombing of Samarra's golden domed shrine.
The destruction of the shrine's famed golden dome -- one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines -- sparked the worst sectarian violence in the country since the 2003 US-led invasion.
Despite the stringent security measures, insurgents killed at least 23 Iraqis and three US soldiers across the country on Sunday.
Iraqi radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia was accused of attacking Sunnis, told a press conference in his home town of Najaf he had returned early from a trip to
Iran to assert control over the militia, while denying it was responsible for the violence.
The main Sunni group, which had declared a boycott on talks on forming a government of national unity with Shiite majority parties, said Monday that it was keen to join the government, but demanded that Shiites return Sunni mosques seized during the riots.