Violence killed 53 people in Iraq on Tuesday as the new prime minister again assured people he would soon name candidates for the country's key security portfolios. Twenty-two Iraqis were killed and 58 wounded when a car bomb exploded in a crowded popular market place at sunset in Husseiniya, just north-east of the capital.
As police and rescue workers swarmed through the area, a second bomb was discovered and defused. Only an hour earlier, 12 people were killed and 32 wounded when a car bomb, ripped through a used car lot in Hillah, the capital of Babel province, south of the capital.
And after dark, nine people died and another 10 were wounded when a bomb exploded as they queued up outside a Baghdad bakery to buy bread.
The blasts came as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told BBC he would fill his government's contentious security posts by the end of the week.
Maliki also said he had a better chance of tackling the daily carnage in Iraq than his predecessors because he was head of the country's first full-term administration since the US-led invasion.