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.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS