Following Iraq's Shiite prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki's promise the first 600 of 2,500 detainees on Wednesday were released from some of Iraq's most notorious prisons.
Meanwhile, Italy announced its intention on Wednesday to pull out all its forces by the end of the year. "The Italian military presence in Iraq will end by the end of the year," D'Alema said, according to the AP.
On his part, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Iraqis would be ready to take over responsibility for the southeastern area where the Italians are based. "This withdrawal will not begin suddenly but it will be gradual," he said during a joint news conference at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. "We have a security plan to transfer the security tasks from the Italian forces to the Iraqi forces starting end of this month."
Italy has 2,700 troops based in Nasiriyah and has already said it intends to pull out 1,600 of them this month.
Violence continued Wednesday, with four police officers killed in a shootout with gunmen driving in three cars near an interchange in Baghdad's upscale al-Mansour district.
In northern Kirkuk, gunmen shot dead a Sunni cleric and member of the local Association of Muslim Clerics. Just before dawn Wednesday, three rockets landed on a house to kill one man and wound his two brothers.
A roadside bomb killed two police officers and wounded another two near a passport office in eastern Baghdad, police 1st. Lt. Ahmed Muhammad Ali said.
Late Tuesday, a parked car bomb exploded outside a Shiite funeral ceremony in southwestern Baghdad, killing at least four people and wounding 20. Gunmen also killed one student, wounded another and kidnapped three at Baghdad University's business school.
