Entire sections of Baghdad's vast Sadr City district have been left nearly abandoned by civilians fleeing a U.S.-led showdown with Shiite militias and seeking aid after facing shortages of food and medicine, humanitarian groups said.

The reports Wednesday by the agencies, including the U.N. children's fund, add to accounts by civilians pouring out of Sadr City. Claire Hajaj, a UNICEF spokeswoman in Jordan, said up to 150,000 people -- including 75,000 children -- were isolated in parts of the city "cordoned off by military forces."

She said about 6,000 people have been forced to flee their homes. The U.S. military is trying to weaken the militia grip in the slum and disrupt rocket and mortar strikes from Sadr City on the Green Zone, which includes the U.S. Embassy and key Iraqi government offices.

EX-GITMO PRISONER TIED TO SUICIDE ATTACK

A Kuwaiti who had been imprisoned in Guantanamo for more than 3 1/2 years carried out a recent suicide attack in Iraq, the U.S. command said Wednesday.

Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi took part in one of three suicide bomb attacks last month in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Scott Rye, a military spokesman.

Al-Ajmi, 29, was transferred in 2005 to Kuwait, where the government was to ensure he would not pose a threat. In May 2006, a Kuwaiti court acquitted him of terrorism charges.

U.S.-IRANIAN TALKS CASUALTY OF FIGHTING

Prospects for another round of talks between Iranian and U.S. officials appeared dead Wednesday after Iraq's foreign minister said tensions between Tehran and Washington made such a meeting impossible.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari's comments showed how sharply U.S.-Iranian relations over the issue of Iraqi violence, which had appeared to improve last fall, have fallen in the wake of fighting in Iraq between U.S.-led forces and Shiite militias.

Zebari's comments came two days after an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said no talks could take place as long as U.S. forces were involved in "open and extensive bombing" of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army strongholds.

HOUSE SQUABBLING OVER FUNDING THE WAR

House leaders on Wednesday worked to rally rank-and-file Democrats behind a $195 billion measure to pay for the war in Iraq through next spring and provide education help to veterans. But it's the spending unrelated to the war, in this case relief for the jobless, that has Republicans threatening to delay a vote until next week.

NEWS SERVICES