Prisoners started a fire during a riot at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, US and Iraqi officials said, resulting in some injuries before wardens began evacuating the jail that became notorious for US detainee abuse.
Namir Mohammed, a local council member in western Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib district, said the inmates set fire to mattresses on Thursday following a search of the facility for mobile phones and banned drugs or medication.
Prison officials said inmates were unhappy about conditions at the jail, which became known across the world as a site of US soldiers’ abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi detainees after the ouster of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003.
“Today on orders from the government we started evacuating the prison to other jails inside Baghdad,” a prison warden who declined to be named said by telephone. “A government committee is handling evacuation. We don’t know where they went.”
He said that others were to be removed yesterday, but did not know if some would be left behind.
Pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib sparked indignation worldwide and helped fuel a bloody insurgency in Iraq that has only begun to fade in the past 18 months.
The prison has since been taken over by Iraqi officials and was reopened in February with a new name. Iraqi officials plan to hold only a fraction of the tens of thousands of prisoners it housed under Saddam and promise improved conditions.
Deputy Iraqi Interior Minister Ahmed al-Khafaji said late on Thursday the fire had been brought under control. It had caused injuries among some prison staff but not the inmates, he said.
On Friday morning, a US military spokesman said inmates at Abu Ghraib had started a fire in their cell to try to overpower their guards. Three guards and three inmates were reportedly injured, he said. US aircraft backed Iraqi forces in responding to the incident.
Meanwhile, Gunmen drove two cars up to an Iraqi army checkpoint in northern Iraq and opened fire on Friday evening, killing five soldiers, police said.
The shooting took place just before Iraqis broke their Ramadan fast in the village of Safara, about 200km northwest of Baghdad.
Safara is just southwest of the disputed northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, a volatile mix of ethnic Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. The area around Kirkuk is amongst Iraq’s most dangerous.
Earlier in the day, militants in a speeding car opened fire on and wounded civilians in two different parts of Kirkuk.
The city lies at the heart of a feud between Baghdad’s Arab-led government and leaders of the largely autonomous Kurdistan region.
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