NAJAF, Iraq, 30 August 2007 — Iraqi religious figure Moqtada Sadr ordered his dreaded Shiite militia yesterday to stop attacks on US-led forces as part of a six-month suspension of the militant group’s activities.

The order came hours after fierce firefights left at least in 52 people dead in the Shiite shrine city of Kerbala on Tuesday in violence witnesses said involved policemen and suspected fighters from Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia.

Sadr aides have denied any involvement of his militants in the fighting that sent hundreds of thousands of pilgrims fleeing from Kerbala and led embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki to slap an indefinite curfew on the city. “I direct the Mehdi Army to suspend all its activities for six months until it is restructured in a way that helps honor the principles for which it is formed,” Sadr said in a statement issued by his office in the city of Najaf.

Sheikh Ahmed Al-Shaibani, a Sadr aide who led a bloody rebellion against US forces in Najaf in 2004, said the suspension included a ban on any attacks on US-led forces. “The suspension means that the Mehdi Army will stop all armed activities against the occupiers or any other groups,” he told AFP. The thousands-strong Mehdi Army has been accused in the death-squad killings of Iraqi Sunni Arabs over the past 18 months since a brutal sectarian conflict broke out last February.

Meanwhile, Maliki, who has come under fire from at home and abroad for failing to restore stability in Iraq, clamped a curfew on Kerbala after Tuesday’s bloodletting. He accused members of executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime of fomenting the violence but said Iraq’s security forces had now taken control of the city, still smoldering from a night of bitter fighting.

An AFP correspondent said fighting which had raged from Tuesday afternoon finally died down early yesterday but until the curfew came into force gunmen could still be seen in the streets brandishing their weapons. National security adviser Muwafaq Al-Rubaie acknowledged shortcomings in the response of the security forces but said army reinforcements had been sent.

“The prime minister himself is supervising the operations.” Troops sent from Baghdad and neighboring provinces to Kerbala, 110 kilometers south of the capital, had secured the old city.

In another development, Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi said Iraq’s Parliament has no immediate plan to hold a vote of no confidence in Maliki’s government, but his administration must work hard to keep its majority. Maliki’s 15-month-old government has been paralyzed by infighting, derailing efforts to foster national reconciliation among warring majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs.

Ministers from three political blocs, or nearly half of Maliki’s Cabinet, have quit, accusing him of sidelining them. Some politicians have raised the idea of a no-confidence vote, but nothing concrete has happened.