Speaking at a joint news conference on Saturday afternoon, Saadun al-Dulaimi also said Iraq would not hesitate to dispatch tanks to the streets to end violence and impose security. "We are ready to fill the streets with armoured vehicles," he told a news conference televised live to the nation on state television.
Earlier in the day 11 bodies were found in five areas of Baghdad, police said. All were male and all had been shot. Police said three people were killed and six wounded in mortar and rocket fire in al-Sadr City, the sprawling slum in eastern Baghdad which is a stronghold of Shia figure Muqtada al-Sadr.
Meanwhile, police said they body of a police officer with shotgun wounds was found near his home east of Tikrit. Armed men opened fire on the house of Harith al-Dari, the head of Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim religious organisation the Association of Muslim Scholars,in an attack he blamed on government forces. Police said al-Dari's security personnel opened fire and there appeared to be injuries on both sides.
Daytime curfew
The police further reported that 14 bodies of police commandos were found near one of the mosques attacked in southern Baghdad where clashes occurred overnight. Gunmen attacked the Qubaisy mosque and the Sunnis' revered Abu Hanifa shrine. At least 12 members of a Shia family have been killed in Diyala province, and at least eight people were killed and 31 wounded in a car bomb blast in Karbala in an atmosphere of heightened tensions in Iraq.
The attack on the Shia family happened in Buhriz, about 60km north of Baghdad, provincial police said. Buhriz, near Baquba town, has seen repeated sectarian strife. Saturday's attack came despite an extraordinary daytime curfew in Diyala province and three other flashpoint areas.
The curfew was intended to curb a wave of sectarian violence that has killed more than 140 people since the bombing of a revered Shia shrine in Samarra on Wednesday. The car bomb in Karbala also wounded 25 people. It exploded on a busy shopping street in the west of the city, 110km south of Baghdad.
Funeral attacked
Earlier on Saturday, the funeral procession of Atwar Bahjat, a well known Al-Arabiya newswoman killed while covering the bombing of the Samarra shrine, was disturbed when armed men opened fire. There was no immediate word on casualties.
An Al-Arabiya television correspondent, who sought sanctuary in a farmer's house, reported that about 150 mourners, including many journalists, were walking through Baghdad's western Abu Ghraib area when the attack happened.
Iraqi army captain, Jasim al-Wahish, said security forces returned fire and rushed 60 more soldiers to the scene, where sporadic clashes continued. Iraqi police said armed men - some firing rockets - attacked Sunni mosques overnight in two Baghdad districts, including the Sunnis' revered Abu Hanifa shrine.
The Iraqi government has extended the daylight security clampdown with a ban on cars on Monday morning. The overnight curfew is still in effect.
