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BAGHDAD — Clashes persisted for a second day Tuesday in a Sunni district of Baghdad between Iraqi forces and what appeared to be local militiamen who feared that Shiite death squads had infiltrated the community.

U.S. and Iraqi troops sealed off streets to the Azamiyah district, and residents reported the area appeared quiet after clerics broadcast appeals for calm over loudspeakers from the main Sunni mosque. At least 13 people died in the two days of fighting, Iraqi officials said.

There were conflicting reports about what triggered the clashes, which underscored the rising tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities that threaten to plunge Iraq into civil war.

The U.S. military said trouble began before dawn Monday when gunmen fired on an Iraqi army patrol. Fighting escalated four hours later when 50 gunmen assaulted a U.S.-Iraqi police checkpoint, prompting U.S. and Iraqi reinforcements to rush to the scene, a U.S. statement said.

Germany agrees to help open Holocaust records

WASHINGTON — After decades of holding back, Germany took a major step Tuesday toward opening Nazi records on 17 million Jews, slave laborers and other Holocaust victims to historians and relatives long anxious for conclusive information about their fate.

Germany pledged to work with the United States to ensure the opening of the archives, which are housed in the German town Bad Arolsen. Eleven nations oversee the 30 million to 50 million documents and are to meet in Luxembourg next month to consider amending a 1955 treaty that has, effectively, limited access and copying.

"We still have negotiations to do,” the American special envoy for Holocaust issues, Edward B. O’Donnell, said in an interview. "Our goal is to reach an agreement as soon as possible.”

Approval in Luxembourg would require agreement by all 11 countries. The parliaments of several of the countries would have to give their approval, as well.

At a news conference Tuesday at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said her country would work with the United States on opening the archives. Until now, Germany has resisted, citing privacy concerns.

In Jerusalem, Holocaust specialist Shlomo Aharonson, a historian at Hebrew University, said, "They have shown good will but that doesn’t mean the problem has been solved.”<