BAGHDAD, 29 December 2005 — At least nine prisoners and guards were killed in a gunbattle at a Baghdad high-security jail yesterday after detained guerrilla suspects, some of them foreigners, grabbed weapons and tried to flee, officials said. One inmate snatched a Kalashnikov rifle from a guard as a handful of high-risk prisoners were taken out at dawn to clean the yard, a guard from the Baghdad prison told Reuters. After raiding the prison armory, the group freed more comrades but US and Iraqi troops based around the jail quelled the revolt.
Five staff and four inmates were killed and five prisoners and a US soldier were wounded, the US military said, denying assertions by police, including an Interior Ministry general, that the death toll was at least 20 among the detainees, who include some of the most violent of Iraq’s insurgents. A Russian, a Tunisian and a Saudi were involved, the US military said.
In other violence, rebels ambushed an Iraqi Army patrol near Dujail, 60 kilometers north of Baghdad, late on Tuesday, killing two soldiers and wounding seven, police said. Serious attacks have increased in the past week following a lull around the Dec. 15 elections, when some rebels from the once dominant Sunni minority observed an informal truce to encourage their community to vote for the first time and stake a share in the new Parliament.
Some Sunni politicians have warned that anger at results they say are forged and which confirmed the dominant position of Shiites could prompt more attacks, not just by the Al-Qaeda-linked rebels bent on wrecking the political process but also by Sunni groups that backed the vote.
