Islam's holy month will end on this week's Eid -- the precise date being one of many things that divides Iraq's Sunnis and majority Shias -- after a month of slaughter that was ferocious even by Iraq's bloody standards.
Hundreds of Iraqis have been murdered in both sectarian violence and clashes between armed militia factions, while US military casualties for October have already hit the highest monthly death toll of 2006.
In renewed violence on Sunday, several bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing two people and injuring nine, including a child, medics said.
One bomb exploded inside a collective taxi as it passed through the crowded Shorjah market, the latest in a series of attacks targeting families preparing for the upcoming feast.
"A passenger dropped a bomb in the back of the cab and got out. The car had gone just 20 metres (yards) when it exploded, killing the driver and another passenger and injuring five bystanders," said police Major Mohammed Ali.
Shortly after he spoke, another blast hit a nearby police vehicle. It was not immediately clear if there had been more casualties, while terrified shoppers scattered for safety.
Meanwhile, US-led coalition forces unleashed an air strike south of the capital, killing five insurgents with a "precision strike" as they planted a booby-trap on a road near the town of Arab Jabur, the military said.
US officers hope the end of Ramazan will see the bloodletting ease up, but the chaos has already changed the terms of the debate in Washington, where talk is turning to the search for an exit strategy.
President George W. Bush met senior commanders and diplomats on Saturday, amid reports the United States is losing confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ability or willingness to stem the violence.
"The participants focused on the nature of the enemy, the challenges in Iraq, how to better pursue our strategy and the stakes of succeeding for the region and the security of the American people," a US spokeswoman said.
According to a report in the New York Times, the officials could decide to impose a timetable on Maliki to address sectarian violence and get a handle on the security situation, or face political "penalties".
"There is one thing we will not do: We will not pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," Bush said in his weekly radio address, two weeks before key congressional elections.
But amid losses on the battlefront, there was also disarray in the public relations campaign, with a US senior diplomat admitting to "arrogance and stupidity" in America's Iraq policy in an interview on the Arabic satellite television Al-Jazeera.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was forced to issue a retraction, saying that "the quote as reported is not accurate".
Three US marines were killed Saturday by "enemy action" while fighting in western Iraq's Al-Anbar province, a lawless desert region populated by Sunni tribes and prey to roving gangs of al Qaeda insurgents.
Their deaths brought US fatalities for the month of October so far to 78, with the monthly death toll on course to become the heaviest since American forces fought the battle of Fallujah in November 2004.
And, while the war in Al-Anbar is a relatively clear-cut battle between al Qaeda and US forces that one US commander called "the closest thing I have to a straight fight", the picture elsewhere is more complex.
In the streets of Baghdad and the killing fields around it, rival Shia and Sunni death squads and militias are engaged in a tit-for-tat battle to cleanse areas of civilian followers of the rival sect.
Meanwhile, in the largely Shia cities of the south, rival militia groups clash with each other and with Iraqi state security forces that are themselves often infiltrated and controlled by the warring factions.
Authorities imposed a curfew in the town of Suweira on Sunday after fighting erupted between the Mahdi Army -- a loosely-organised militia nominally loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- and police.
Further south in the large Shia town of Amara, Iraqi army soldiers patrolled to protect a fragile cease-fire between the Mahdi Army and police, after fighting last week left 24 dead and more than 150 wounded.
American commanders now regard the Shia militias as the biggest single threat to Iraq's stability, and have urged the prime minister to disarm them.
Maliki, however, is more cautious and appears to be courting Sadr.
The firebrand Shia preacher has publicly called his militants to order, and met last week with both Maliki and Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, who both praised his calls for restraint.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2006