US troops in Basra hand over military base to Iraqi forces

The US military handed over the military base of Bucca, which used to the largest detention centre in the rich oil city of Basra, to the Iraqi government on Sunday as it prepares to leave Iraq seven years after ousting Saddam Hussein.Iraqi officials and US military commanders attended a ceremony on the military base. Bucca was opened in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004, when shocking pictures of US soldiers abusing detainees at the west Baghdad prison helped fuel a bloody insurgency. The US forces formally closed the detention centre on March 2010 and handed over nearly 3000 inmates to Iraqi authorities. Under a security pact signed between the Iraqi and US governments on December 2008, the United States should pull out forces by the end of 2011and transfer security responsibility to Iraqis. Washington plans to more than halve US forces from the current 96,000 to about 50,000 by August 31, 2010.