Sweeps and targeted raids by U.S. and Iraqi forces for extremists' weaponry in northeast Baghdad's neighborhoods are chipping away at enemy munitions stores, and new road barriers and checkpoints into and within the area are making smuggling of arms more problematic than in the past, U.S. military officials say.

From May to August Iraqi Security Forces, including National Police units, confiscated a mountain of weaponry in northeastern Baghdad from gunmen of anti-American cleric's Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM) militia and Iranian-influenced Special Group (SG) cells, as well as remnant cells of al-Qaida.

According to the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division in northeastern Baghdad, Iraqi security forces in the area from May until August seized 5,471 rifles; 613 artillery rounds; 2,623 mortar rounds; 320 rockets; 991 rocket propelled grenades (RPGs); 342 improvised explosive devices (IEDs); 289 fully assembled explosively formed penetrators (EFPs); and 349 EFP bodies and plates.

U.S. forces in the district of Adhamiya, next to Sadr City, and in southern Sadr City in August confiscated 190 mortar rounds of various sizes, 49 rockets in various sizes, 35 EFPs still in their manufacturing packaging, and scores of components such as mortar and rocket tubes, fuses and boosters.

Thirty-five boxes and numerous packets of one quarter-inch and half-inch ball bearings used in anti-personnel explosive devices were also found as well as boxes of rifle munitions, 2,500 loose rounds of 7.62mm bullets, and steel or copper disks, plates, blasting caps and other materials used in IEDs.

EFPs, which U.S. forces say come from Iran but which the Iranian government denies supplying Shiite militias, are shaped charges designed to penetrate the armor of tanks, personnel carriers and other vehicles.

The number of mortar and rocket rounds, such as 107mm rockets, is important especially in the Sadr City area. Its northern area is a densely packed (about 2.2 million people) slum of narrow streets and apartment buildings with little or no open spaces nor clear horizons, which makes the firing of mortars and rockets difficult if not impossible.

Extremists used the more open neighborhoods of southern Sadr City in April and May to pummel Baghdad's International Zone with their rockets and mortars after Sadr lifted an earlier ceasefire with the central government. That sector is now firmly under the control of U.S. and Iraqi forces and unfettered access to it has been blocked off by a concrete barrier extending about three miles.

The northern sector is now occupied by Iraqi Army Battalions that successfully put down JAM and other Shiite militias in the southern city of Basra in April.

Artillery shells, mortar and rocket rounds are broken down by Shiite extremists and used in IEDs, which are planted along roads.

Al-Qaida extremists in more open parts of the Adhamiya district use shells for IEDs as well as VBIEDS -- vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.

"The types of attacks (by al-Qaida), the methods have remained very specific -- VBIEDs, suicide bomber, some small arm fire -- but their ability to make them effective has really dropped off," said Col Allen Batschelet, the 4th ID's deputy commander. "Where we used to seeing VBIEDS that were extremely technical and with a lot of explosive material. Now they're very amateurish and the explosive material is down to the 10-15 pounds (range), where we used to see some of these VBIEDs or deep-buried IEDs that were in the hundreds of pounds of explosive materials."

Heavy fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces against JAM and SGs ended in mid-May after JAM, pushed out of southern Sadr City, negotiated a new ceasefire with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

High-ranking cadres in both organizations fled to Iran where Sadr returned many months ago to resume his religious studies to gain in clerical rank and thus more influence among Shiites in Iraq. Those left behind have mainly gone to ground, only sporadically engaging in violence.

Neighboring Adhamiya is a sectarian mishmash. Closest to the Tigris, an area known as old Adhamiya, the people are mainly Sunni Muslims and once a support base for al-Qaida. Other areas of the district are Shiite.

In August, according to U.S. intelligence sources, attacks in northeastern Baghdad as a whole against U.S. forces numbered 13. There was an equal number against Iraqi civilians (by al-Qaida) to stir up sectarianism and five attacks against Iraqi security forces. There were 95 attacks against all three in July, down from 740 in April.

Sadr's disbanding of JAM was announced recently. Followers were urged to join a new organization focused on social improvement for Shiites, except for those chosen for his new militia.

Any force formed would need weaponry and munitions on site. U.S. and Iraqi forces are determined to keep it from them. According to various U.S. and Iraqi officers in northeastern Baghdad, must of that effort is being fueled by information supplied by local people.

"Population loyalty is shifting," said a U.S. military officer. "The population has seen the difference in how their lives can be without JAM and with the day-to-day operations of the Iraqi security forces and coalition forces."