Rock-hurling prisoners riot at main US POW camp

10.00am - by SAUL HUDSON

UMM QASR, Iraq - Hurling rocks, bottles filled with sand and wooden stakes, detainees at the only permanent US prisoner-of-war camp in Iraq riot almost daily, military officials said on Sunday.

Anger over slow food lines or disputes between different ethnic groups can spark uprisings -- especially with ringleaders quick to incite riots inside the prison that houses about 6000 Iraqis under long white open tents, they said.

"Pretty much every day there's a riot. It can get real ugly in there for the MPs (military police)", said Major Joel Droba of the 13th Psychological Operations battalion, which broadcasts orders for calm over loudspeakers and interrogates prisoners to weed out instigators.

On Sunday, clashes broke out when some prisoners opposed an Iraqi general attempting to organise a hunger strike, he said. Hours later, the camp appeared calm to a Reuters correspondent.

Prisoners wearing T-shirts and trousers milled around or chatted in groups of up to a dozen. Some gazed at the guards, leaning on the two-metre high chain-linked fence topped with barbed wire and draped with bright red blankets billowing in gusty winds.

The riots have generally not been widespread among the prisoners but military police have regularly had to enter to quell violence at the camp, which is a few kilometres outside Umm Qasr at the southeastern tip of Iraq.

"They'll throw anything. There's rock throwing, bottles filled with sand and crude weapons like the tent stakes," said Sergeant Brian Mathias.

The United States has been criticised by rights groups for shackling, blindfolding and housing prisoners captured during the war in Afghanistan in open cages in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Captain Lisa Weidenbush, the US operations officer for the camp, said the United States was sensitive about that criticism but assured visiting journalists who were kept at about 300m from the prisoners their treatment was "humane".

"I can tell you from firsthand knowledge they are being taken care of very well," she said.

Tamara al-Rifai, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said they had interviewed about 3800 prisoners over the last week at the camp but declined to comment on the prison conditions.

British troops built the camp outside Umm Qasr, the first Iraqi town to be taken in the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Receiving Iraqis from all over the battlefield, they placed the prisoners in tents that can hold about 250 people each and provided them with hot meals such as rice and vegetables.

British and Spanish military doctors tend to prisoners' gunshot and shrapnel wounds and give them medicine for chronic illnesses, such as diabetes.

The guards play Iraqi music, broadcast readings from the Koran and have laid out carpets for the prisoners to pray, military officials said.

Last week, a roughly 800-strong US military police force took command of the camp and plans in the next few days to transfer the prisoners to a new complex on the site where they will be in tents in groups of up to 15 and have running water.

The United States labelled the prisoners held in the US Navy base in Cuba as "unlawful combatants" -- a classification that means they are not automatically afforded the rights of the Geneva Convention given to prisoners of war.

All the detainees at Umm Qasr had prisoner of war status and none were known to be non-Iraqi, military officials said.

US troops planned to hold tribunals that might classify prisoners as "unlawful combatants" if they met certain criteria, including fighting without any identification, Major Doug Proietto said.

The Pentagon today raised the death toll among American troops fighting in Iraq to 117 and said 400 had been wounded in action in the 3-week-old war.

Five American troops remain missing, but the number of prisoners of war was cut to zero on Sunday after seven US Army soldiers were rescued by Marines in Iraq when they were abandoned by Iraqi forces.

The 117 American war deaths, including 103 killed in action with Iraqi forces, was an increase of one from Saturday after the status of the pilot of a Navy F/A-18 attack jet was changed from missing to killed in action.

The pilot, whose jet was lost over Iraq on Apri 2, was identified as Lt Nathan White, 30, of Mesa, Arizona. He was deployed with Carrier Air Wing Five aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk near Iraq.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war