Updated on Tuesday, May 01, 2007, 00:00 IST

New York, May 1: Individual gunmen and sometimes whole units are breaking off Moqtada al-Sadr's Army, adding a new dimension to Iraq's already brutal kaleidoscope of violence, a media report said on Monday.

Weeks ago Sadr issued orders for his fighters to lie low as thousands of new US and Iraqi soldiers deployed throughout Baghdad.

For the most part they have obeyed and the resulting drop in sectarian killings was the best news that US commander Gen David Petraeus had to report last week, as he pleaded with Congressional leaders to give his security plan time to work.

Now individual gunmen and sometimes whole units from Sadr's Mahdi Army are breaking off on their own, said a news agency The militiamen "are under a lot of pressure, so it's natural for them to shed pieces," a coalition official familiar with the group said.

In Baghdad, after an initial dramatic drop, the number of corpses being found each morning is on the rise again. Outside the capital, fighters fleeing south have linked up with local Mahdi units; their presence is upsetting the uneasy balance of power struck between various Shiite groups in the region.

Coalition officials, said the report, worry that Iran's revolutionary guards will use their ties with the Mahdi Army to recruit rogue units for attacks on American troops. Last week Petraeus claimed that a Mahdi Splinter group was responsible for the killing of five Americans in Karbala in January.

Sadr himself, who has not been seen in public since the security plan was launched, has hinted at the divisions within his organization, newsweek said a news agency . Bureau Report