Forty-two people were killed Thursday in Kut, southeast of Baghdad, Iraq's Interior Ministry said, the latest casualties in three days of clashes between militias and Iraqi security forces.
Iraq's offensive against what it characterizes as "outlaws" of hard-line Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia began Tuesday in Basra, Iraq's second largest city.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has been overseeing the operation in southern Iraq, has given militants an ultimatum to surrender their weapons by Saturday.
The fighting, which also saw Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone -- home to the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government -- come under fire, has threatened to unravel a delicate al-Sadr cease-fire credited with reducing bloodshed between Sunnis and Shiites.
Since Tuesday, clashes in Basra and throughout Iraq's Shiite heartland have left more than 100 dead and many wounded in Basra, Baghdad, Hilla, Kut, Karbala and Diwaniya.
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