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Prisoners, guards clash at Iraq detention facility; 16 injured

Prisoners, guards clash at Iraq detention facility; 16 injured

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Prisoners at Iraq's largest detention facility protested the transfer of several detainees deemed "unruly" by authorities, throwing rocks and setting tents on fire in a disturbance that injured four guards and 12 detainees, the military said Monday.

Friday's protest at Camp Bucca - which holds about 6,000 prisoners, nearly two-thirds of all those in Iraq - caused only minor injuries before being brought under control, authorities said. It was the third major incident at an Iraqi prison in three days.

Murtadha al-Hajaj, an official at radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's office in the city of Umm Qasr, near Camp Bucca, said several Sadr supporters were wounded during the confrontation. He said they were protesting a lack of access to medical treatment and claimed U.S. guards opened fire.

Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a U.S. military spokesman, said he did not know if the guards opened fire, but denied that any detainee was deprived of medical treatment.

Last month, the U.S. military said guards discovered a 600-foot tunnel - dug with makeshift tools - leading out of Camp Bucca. The tunnel reached beyond the compound fence, with an opening hidden beneath a floorboard, but no one had escaped, authorities said.

News of the Camp Bucca clash came the same day a suicide bomber driving a tractor blew himself up close to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, wounding four civilians in the second insurgent attack around the prison in two days.

Al-Qaida in Iraq said 10 of its fighters died in an assault on the same prison Saturday, while the U.S. military put the insurgents' casualties at one dead and about 50 wounded. Forty-four American soldiers and 13 prisoners were injured in the fighting - the latest in a series of large-scale attacks by insurgents in Iraq.

In an unconfirmed Internet posting, Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed about 20 militants scaled the prison's walls and one of them reached a prison tower. It said two of its fighters were wounded and 10 were killed, including seven suicide bombers.

The U.S. military denied anyone got inside the prison and said no inmates escaped. It said only one suicide bomber participated, while others fired assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

[Last modified April 5, 2005, 01:31:18]