It's unclear what happened yesterday in the seven-hour battle in Adhamiya, the Baghdad suburb. Apparently, insurgents (mostly Sunnis) and a neighborhood armed (mostly Sunni) militia clashed first with government forces and then with reinforcements from the (mostly Shiite) Interior Ministry commandos, from whose ranks are drawn the Shiite death squads that are killing dozens of Sunnis every day.

The Post, though, knows which side it is on, it seems. In its coverage of the confusing incident, the Post says:

Reinforcements cordoned off the neighborhood and five terrorists were killed and seven detained.

Hello? Terrorists? The New York Times account (unlike the Post) mentions that the Iraqi government forces are often linked to death squads, and provides a far more nuanced account of the events.

In themselves, the events in Adhamiya clearly suggest that the civil war in Iraq has expanded to engulf an entite Baghdad neighborhood, which started building self-defense militias after Shiite revenge attacks that followed the bombing of a Shiite mosque on Feb. 22. More and more, things are spiraling out of control, and the U.S. army finds itself in the middle.