BAGHDAD, Iraq - Calm returned to a southern city Tuesday after Shiite militiamen loyal to an anti-US cleric reached an agreement with Iraqi government forces to end a 12-hour street battle that killed 40 people.

Also Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a key architect of US policy on the treatment of prisoners and the rule of law in Iraq, arrived in Baghdad.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia men look at their damaged building after mortars attack, in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday Aug. 29, 2006. Three mortars, two rocket propelled grenades and a bomb exploded Tuesday at the office of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, killing two guards and flattening the premise, police said. [AP]

Gonzales, a former White House counsel, was holding meetings in the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses Iraq's government and the US Embassy, US Embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth Colton said. Meetings would include Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh and US Justice Department officials working in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled bodies of 11 people with their hands and legs bound, police 1st Lt. Mutaz Salahiddin said. He said they were found near a school in the Shiite-dominated southern neighborhood of Maalif and appeared to have been tortured.

In Monday's fighting in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, at least 25 Iraqi soldiers, 10 civilians and five militiamen were killed and 75 people were wounded. The fighting was some of the worst in recent months between the Iraqi army and Shiite militiamen loyal to the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

"Life is back to normal, the shops are open and Iraqi police and soldiers are deployed everywhere in Diwaniyah," said police Lt. Raid Jabir, contacted by telephone.

Leaders of the tribes to which the dead combatants belonged held reconciliation talks Tuesday to prevent retaliatory attacks, Jabir said.

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