… SADR CITY
"From March 23 to May 12, 2008, US Army and Iraqi security forces engaged in an intense urban battle in and around Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City. The battle forced units that had been mainly focused on counterinsurgency operations to convert overnight into combined-arms teams of armor and mechanized infantry and engage a large enemy element in a high-intensity fight in a city containing around two million noncombatants. The adaptions these units made and the results of this short but pivotal battle provide important lessons for future combat in dense urban environments.
Sadr City is a dense Shiite area in eastern Baghdad whose boundaries with adjacent Sunni-dominated neighborhoods represent sectarian fault lines. At the time of the battle, Sadr City contained an estimated population of between 1.6 to 2.4 million residents. Purpose built in 1958 to house a large population of migrants moving to Baghdad to look for work, it maintained near slum-like conditions from the time of its construction. It stands out on a map of Baghdad as a solid, compact square of streets arranged in a grid pattern. The neighborhood is made up of narrow streets and alleyways, spider webs of power lines, and mostly three-story or shorter buildings that range from simple cinder blocks to reinforced cement construction.
Containing around a quarter of Baghdad's estimated population of seven million in less than five square miles, Sadr City is one of the most densely populated areas where the United States has ever fought. Its population surpasses those of the sites of other urban battles, such as Manila in 1945, whose pre–World War II population was an estimated 1.1 million, or Seoul in 1950, with one million residents. As a battlefield (both in 2008 and an earlier battle in 2004), Sadr City exceeded any other part of Baghdad, in terms of density of both population and structures, where fighting occurred during the 2003 invasion…."
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