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Two days of clashes between elements of the Mahdi Army loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's faction left 25 dead among gunmen and police, underscoring alarm about the growing influence of such virtual private armies.

The fighting came as Sunni insurgents staged audacious military-style parades in a pair of cities west of Baghdad, advertising their defiance of U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies.

The Iraqi military on Friday sent about 600 reinforcements to retake Amarah. British forces who had turned over control of the city in August said they had 500 soldiers on standby if the government called for help.

By Saturday, shops and government offices had reopened while army units manned checkpoints around the city of 750,000 people, which sits at the head of Iraq's famous marshlands where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers draw close together.

Haider Ali Abdullah, 35, said he wasted no time in reopening his tiny restaurant after hearing that fighting had ended.

"We were terrified," Abdullah said by phone. "The last two days had a major effect on our lives since we depend on this business to make a living."

Abdullah blamed both the local authorities and militiamen for allowing the situation to deteriorate.

"If I have a problem with anyone, I should face him and rely on my own wisdom to solve it without affecting the lives of others and killing dozens of people," Abdullah said.

The Amarah showdown also highlighted the risk of an all-out conflict between rival Shiite factions linked to political blocs wielding considerable influence over the shaky four-month-old government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Mahdi Army gunmen attacked after the seizure of one of their leaders by local police that are largely controlled by Iraq's other main Shiite militia, the Badr Brigades. The second group is sponsored by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, whose leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, is a key power broker who returned from decades in Iranian exile after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Amarah lies just 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the border with Iran, where the Shiite theocracy is said to be funding, arming and training both factions.

Along with the rising death toll among U.S. forces in the country, such outbreaks lend urgency to a policy review underway among Bush administration political and military officials. Polls ahead of congressional elections next month show shrinking support for the war and leading Republicans have urged for changes in the administration's approach to Iraq.

President Bush, who conceded Friday that "right now it's tough" for American forces in Iraq, met at the White House with Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, to review the situation in the country. The White House insists all that is in question is a change in tactics, not an overhaul in the American strategy of backing up Iraq's government and army until they are able to function independently...

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that despite the violence in Amarah, it was not a strategic error for the British to turn over control of the city to the Iraqis in August.

"The biggest mistake would be to not pass things over to the Iraqis, create a dependency on their part, instead of developing strength and capacity and competence," Rumsfeld said.

The clashes marred the Muslim day of prayer for the second Friday in a row in cities where American and British forces had only recently ceded military control to Iraqi security forces and the army. More than 100 people were slain in Balad this past week, most of them by Shiite deaths squads drawn largely from the Mahdi Army.

A U.S. soldier was killed when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb southwest of the capital. A Salvadorian Army captain was killed and four soldiers were wounded when their convoy hit an explosive device in Wasit province, southeast of Baghdad, El Salvador's defense department said.

The U.S. combat death toll in October alone stood at 75 — likely to be the highest for any month in nearly two years.

Attacks on Americans jumped by 22% in the first three weeks of the holy month of Ramadan, when compared to the three previous weeks. The U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said the bid to stabilize the capital was failing and needs to be refocused.

Elsewhere in Iraq, clashes that broke out Friday between Shiite and Sunni tribes just south of Baghdad have killed four people and injured at least five, said Lt. Mohamed Al-Shemeri of the police force in the city of Kut.

Two people were killed and 16 wounded when a car bomb detonated around 10:00 a.m. (0700 GMT) near the Sarafiyah bridge across the Tigris river in northern Baghdad, police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razaq said. The bomb apparently missed its intended target, an Iraqi police patrol.

The bodies of four electric company workers kidnapped Friday from the Hafriyah area, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad, were turned into the morgue in Kut, said morgue official Hadi Al-Atabi.

In Nasiriyah, about 320 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Baghdad, local groups rallied in support of recent efforts to reconcile Shiite and Sunni groups sponsored by the Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Religious leaders met in Mecca, Islam's holiest city, earlier in the week and issued a series of edicts forbidding violence between Iraq's two Muslim sects. Organizers of the Mecca meeting say they aim only to stop sectarian killings between rival Sunnis and Shiites rather than forge a truce on attacks against U.S. forces in the country.

Differences between the two sides were exacerbated when parliament adopted a Shiite-backed law this week allowing provinces in the Shiite and oil-rich south to establish an autonomous region like the Kurdish one in the north.

Sunni Arabs and some Shiites opposed the law, arguing that federalism would lead to the eventual breakup of Iraq.

Enlarge By Alaa al-Marjani, AP Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr emerge from a meeting Wednesday in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad.

		A masked gunman stands on a street corner as a building burns Friday in Amarah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. By Haidar Hany, AP