Baghdad —- The U.S. military expressed hope Sunday for a diplomatic solution to seven weeks of fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City as a fragile cease-fire settled over the Shiite slum that houses nearly half the capital's 6 million people.

No violence was reported as gunmen withdrew and shops reopened on the first day of the cease-fire brokered by Shiite lawmakers and representatives of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's political movement.

Al-Sadr followers distributed food in the neighborhood, residents said.

"We're doing limited operations in Sadr City as this implementation process takes place," said a U.S. military spokesman, Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll. He warned that a truce had not yet been established and that government and Shiite representatives were still talking.

Meanwhile in northern Iraq, where Iraq's security forces on Saturday launched a new operation against al-Qaida in Iraq, police killed five gunmen west of Mosul.

Separately, unknown gunmen attacked a U.S.-allied Awakening Council checkpoint in Baquoba, killing one of its Sunni guards.

In other developments:

> The U.S. military ordered a court-martial for a civilian contractor charged with stabbing another contractor while working as an Army translator in Iraq —- the first such military prosecution since the Vietnam War.

> The U.S. military announced the death of a soldier in a vehicle rollover Saturday in Anbar province.

> Turkish warplanes and artillery units struck Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq in a second day of raids on rebel positions.