BAGHDAD, Aug 8, (Agencies): Weekend violence across Iraq killed 60 people, officials said on Sunday, just days ahead of the start of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan when insurgents typically step up their attacks.
The unrest has fuelled concerns about security here — more than 100 people have died so far this month — amid a massive pullout of American forces, although US officers insist that Iraqi soldiers and police are up to the task.
Iraq is also grappling with a five-month-long political impasse after March 7 parliamentary elections which failed to produce a clear winner, ushering in as yet fruitless coalition negotiations between the leading parties.
The death toll from three explosions in the southern port city of Basra on Saturday evening, which officials said were caused by bombs and not a power generator short circuit as first believed, rose to 43 on Sunday.
“We received 43 corpses, and 185 people have been wounded,” said Dr Riyadh Abdelamir, director of Basra province’s health department, adding that women and children were among the injured.
Ali al-Maliki, the head of the provincial council’s security committee, said the deaths — from a double car bombing and a third roadside bomb which caused a large fire — were “the result of terrorist action.”
The city’s police command had late on Saturday attributed the explosion to the short-circuit of a communal electricity generator.
Eyewitnesses at the crowded Ashaar market in the centre of Basra, Iraq’s third largest city, said there were three explosions between 7:00 pm and 7:30 pm, but the cause was not clear according to their accounts.

“I saw people running in all directions, even over those who were knocked to the ground by the force of the blasts,” said Khulud Al-Hussein, 37, a housewife who was buying goods at the market.
Kadhim Ali Jaffar, a 61-year-old street salesman, harrowingly described the death of his son, Jawad, 25, also a market salesman.
“He did not come back after the explosion so I started to look for him in the hospitals,” said Jaffar, crying and shaking as he recounted the incident.
“The first one told me he was dead and in the morgue. When I went there I found a young man but he wasn’t my son. I continued to look until I found him in the fridge at another hospital.”
A series of car bombs killed at least 12 people and wounded scores in the Iraqi cities of Ramadi and Falluja on Sunday, while the prominent governor of troubled northern Nineveh province escaped an assassination attempt.
The blasts followed a series of explosions at a busy market in the centre of Iraq’s southern oil hub Basra late on Saturday that killed at least 43 and wounded 185, officials said.
Iraq has been in political limbo since an inconclusive March 7 election while Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish political factions try to sort out a coalition government. Politicians and security officials say insurgents appear to be trying to take advantage of the power vacuum.

Ready
The commander of American troops in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, said Sunday that Iraqi forces were adequately prepared to take over full security operations when the US combat mission ends later this month.
“For the last 20 months, we’ve been slowly and deliberately turning over more and more responsibility to them, and they have stepped up” despite a recent upsurge in deadly violence and Iraq’s five-month political impasse, Odierno told ABC’s “This Week” program.
“They continue to do broad-scoped operations across all of Iraq. We continue to help them as they do these, and that will continue after 1 September,” when the US contingent will have dropped to 50,000 soldiers and US combat operations will have ceased.
“But we do believe they are ready to assume full operations in Iraq,” he added.
Odierno stressed that he thought Iraqis were making progress towards putting together a new government, even as some US and Iraqi officials fear swelling violence in the country if political negotiations, undertaken since the March 7 elections, fail.

“I think we’ll see some first steps toward forming a government by 1 September,” he said, as he appeared to encourage resolution to the political crisis sooner rather than later in order to avoid continued perceptions of weakness that could be exploited by extremist groups.
“It’s important for the Iraqis to understand the importance of moving forward quickly, and I think we’re starting to see that as we see negotiations pick up over the last couple of weeks,” he said.
Iraqi political leaders are likely to make headway in forming a government ahead of a Sept 1 date for the United States to end combat operations in the country, the US commander in Iraq said on Sunday.
Iraq has been in political limbo since an inconclusive March 7 election as Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish political factions have failed to agree on a new government in five months since the vote.
“I think we’ll see some first steps toward forming a government by 1 September,” US General Ray Odierno told ABC’s “This Week” program without elaborating on what those steps might be.
Aziz
Iraq’s jailed former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz can no longer walk after his health deteriorated significantly, his Jordan-based son said on Sunday.
“My mother and sister visited my father in jail on July 30. Two men had to assist him because he could not walk. His health has significantly deteriorated,” Ziad Aziz, who has lived in Amman with his family since 2003, told AFP.

“My father has gum infections and can’t use his teeth. There is no dentist in prison to help him.”
Ziad Aziz said his 74-year-old father was “being treated with respect” at Baghdad’s Khadimiyah jail, where he and 25 other members of Saddam Hussein’s former regime were transferred from the US-run Camp Cropper detention centre in July.
“My father has stopped taking medicine for his heart problems and diabetes since his transfer to Khadimiyah because they are not available. He only takes medicine for blood pressure,” Aziz said.
Aziz’s family has repeatedly called for his release on health grounds, particularly after he suffered a heart attack in late 2007.
“I call on President Jalal Talabani to use his constitutional powers and free Tareq Aziz from jail ahead of the holy month of Ramadan,” Aziz’s Amman-based lawyer Badie Aref told AFP.
“I also call on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to help release him.”
The former leader last week accused US President Barack Obama of “leaving Iraq to the wolves” by pressing ahead with a withdrawal of American combat troops despite a recent upsurge in violence.
“We are all victims of America and Britain,” he said in an interview published Friday in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, adding the United States should stay in Iraq to correct mistakes it had made since the 2003 invasion.

Aziz turned himself in to US forces in April 2003 and is one of Saddam’s few surviving top cohorts.
Seen around the world as the principal spokesman for the dictator’s murderous regime, Aziz was appointed Iraq’s deputy premier in 1991 after serving as foreign minister.
In 2009, he was jailed for 15 years for the 1992 execution of 42 Baghdad wholesalers and separately given a seven-year term for his role in expelling Kurds from Iraq’s north.
The Iraqi-run prison where Aziz is now jailed is in Khadimiyah, the same northern district of Baghdad where Saddam was hanged on December 30, 2006 inside one of his regime’s old torture centres.