Haifa Street residents claim continuing abuses

A man sifts through the rubble of his house on Haifa Street

BAGHDAD, IRAQ - The two top U.S. officials in Iraq voiced confidence Monday that Iraq's Shiite Muslim-led government would show no favoritism in its efforts to secure the city, even as residents of a Sunni Muslim neighborhood complained that Shiite Iraqi security forces and government-backed militias were preventing them from evacuating wounded and going for food.

Eight days after a joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive began to take control of the Haifa Street area in central Baghdad, residents said they had no water and no electricity and that people seeking food had been shot at random. They said that they could see U.S. soldiers nearby but that the Americans were making no effort to intervene.

"The Americans are doing nothing, as if they are backing the militias," said one resident, who asked to be identified only as Abu Sady, 36, for security reasons.

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