Clash at Iraq jail injures 44

BAGHDAD -- Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades and detonated two car bombs yesterday while attacking the Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad, wounding 44 US forces and 12 prisoners, the US military said.

The attack, carried out by 40 to 60 militants, began as darkness fell on the city, First Lieutenant Adam Rondeau said. Soldiers and Marines stationed at the detention facility responded, and the resulting clash lasted about 40 minutes, Rondeau said.

The US military today said some of the injuries were serious.

''This was obviously a very well-organized attack and a very big attack," Rondeau said.

Officials had said that overall attacks have been declining in Iraq, but they also had noted that insurgents seem to be focusing efforts on bigger, better organized operations.

Since US forces took control of the prison, insurgents frequently have lobbed mortar rounds inside but not engaged in the type of head-on assault that took place yesterday. Insurgents typically have preferred to remain hidden, working in small groups or on suicide missions, and attacking from afar with mortar rounds and rockets.

The attack yesterday was one of the largest against US forces anywhere in Iraq since the Jan. 30 Iraqi national elections.

It wasn't immediately known whether any of the insurgents were arrested or suffered casualties. Plumes of smoke were seen rising from the area.

Abu Ghraib was at the center of a prisoner abuse scandal that was revealed in 2004. Pictures showing US soldiers piling naked inmates in a pyramid and humiliating them sexually became public and outraged Iraqis.

The resulting scandal tarnished the military's image worldwide and sparked investigations of detainee abuses.

The United States is holding about 10,500 prisoners in Iraq.

Also yesterday, a car bomb exploded in central Iraq, killing five people, including four police officers on patrol, while gunmen killed an education official in Baghdad.

The car bomb in Khan Bani Saad, near the troubled city of Baqouba in central Iraq, also injured two police officers and three civilians, provincial police Colonel Mudafar al-Jubori said.

In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire from a car, killing Hassib Zamil outside of the Education Ministry offices in the Sadr City neighborhood, education official Ibrahim Abid Wali said.

A US Marine was killed Friday while conducting security operations in Ramadi, the military said yesterday.

As of Friday, at least 1,532 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Also yesterday, the US military praised an edict issued by Sunni clerics that called for Iraqis to join police and army forces, saying it was a sign that people were fed up with the insurgency. But the statement added that enlistees ''must be prepared to serve all the people."

The edict, read by a cleric in the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, instructed enlistees to refrain from helping foreign troops against their own countrymen and said the move was designed to prevent security forces from falling into ''the hands of those who have caused chaos, destruction, and violated the sanctities."

The announcement, endorsed by a group of 64 Sunni clerics and scholars, could help the government boost the image of security forces struggling to fight the insurgency.

For months, Sunni clerics had warned minority Sunnis, who were dominant under Hussein, against cooperating with Iraqi police and soldiers.

Material from the Los Angeles Times was used in this report.