NAJAF, Iraq - War-weary Iraqis returned to devastated offices and shops in Najaf on Saturday after three weeks of clashes as U.S. forces monitored a fragile cease-fire, but violence persisted in Baghdad, killing at least five people.

Dozens of municipal workers were out for the first time in weeks, sweeping debris off roads lined with battle-scarred buildings from which U.S. bombs had torn huge chunks.

Calm settled over the city a day after militants loyal to rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr filed out of the revered Imam Ali Shrine and turned over the keys to Iraq's top Shiite cleric, symbolizing their acceptance of a peace deal to end a standoff with a combined U.S.-Iraqi force.

Battles between Shiite militants and U.S. forces in an al-Sadr stronghold in Baghdad, however, left three dead and 25 injured on Saturday, officials said.

U.S. soldiers in Humvees drove through the troubled Sadr City slum with loudspeakers, demanding people stay home because coalition forces were "cleaning the area of armed men," according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. Sporadic gunfire could be heard.

Saad al-Amili, a Health Ministry official, said three people were killed and 25 were wounded in the skirmishes.

Militants fired assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at American troops patrolling the area, said U.S. Capt. Brian O'Malley of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, adding U.S. forces suffered no casualties.

Guerrillas also fired a barrage of mortar rounds into eastern Baghdad on Saturday, killing two civilians and wounding six others, officials said, in explosions that could be heard across the capital.

Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said two people washing cars in a street near the former Iraqi National Olympic Committee building died in the explosions.

At least six other people were injured in the attacks, said Bashir Mohammed of Baghdad's al-Kindi hospital.

Witnesses said at least four mortars landed in the same area on Palestine Street - a main Baghdad thoroughfare - as cars were driving by. Panicked people on the street were seen running for safety.

U.S. forces had pulled back from Najaf's Imam Ali Shrine and the Old City around it by Saturday but maintained positions in the rest of the city.

"Today, the Najafis can sleep well," Hamed al-Khafaf, an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, told Al-Arabiya television late Friday.

The peace plan, presented by al-Sistani on Thursday and accepted by the Iraqi government and al-Sadr, calls for the cities of Najaf and Kufa to be declared weapons-free, for all foreign forces to withdraw from Najaf and leave police in charge of security and for the government to compensate those harmed by the fighting.