Blockade on Iraq's Sadr City to be lifted Saturday

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A two-week old ban on vehicles in Baghdad's eastern Shi'ite slum of Sadr City will be lifted on Saturday, the Iraqi military said on Wednesday.

Major-General Qassim Moussawi, a military spokesman, said the effective blockade on cars entering or leaving Sadr City, the scene of fierce clashes in past days between Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia and both U.S. and Iraqi security forces, would end at 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Saturday.

A separate vehicle curfew in Shula in northwestern Baghdad will be lifted a day earlier, he said.

Iraqi authorities imposed a Baghdad-wide vehicle ban on March 27 to contain clashes with Sadr's militia. It was lifted for most of the city four days later, but Sadr City and Shula had remained under lock-down.

A separate one-day car ban was imposed on all of Baghdad on Wednesday to prevent violence on the fifth anniversary of the capital's fall to U.S. troops.

Residents of Sadr City have complained of skyrocketing food prices, rubbish piling up and the problems of being trapped indoors.

(Writing by Noah Barkin; editing by Ralph Boulton)