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U.N. Official Endorses Iraq Vote
Troops secure area around Camp Justice, an Iraqi-run prison in Baghdad where at least nine people died in a shootout.
(By Akram Saleh -- Getty Images)
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Accounts of the incident, including tallies of the number of dead and wounded provided by U.S. and Iraqi sources, varied widely, however. Some reports from prison employees suggested that as many as 20 prisoners had been killed or wounded.
A later statement by the military Wednesday afternoon said that all prisoners were accounted for, but a spokesman for Iraq's Defense Ministry, Muhammed Askary, told al-Arabiya television Wednesday evening that Iraqi forces were still searching for three inmates.
The high-security facility holds about 200 prisoners, most incarcerated for violent crimes. Several sources said the inmates began the assault by overpowering a guard and taking his rifle.
The condition of Iraqi prisons has come under intense scrutiny in recent months with the disclosure of abuses at two Interior Ministry facilities, where many inmates were found to have been tortured. The U.S. military has said it will not turn over detainees or detention facilities to the Iraqi government until prison conditions have improved.
Also Wednesday, al-Arabiya aired footage purporting to show a French citizen abducted by insurgents Dec. 5, part of a recent surge in kidnappings of foreigners. The man, identified as Bernard Planche, an employee of a nongovernmental organization involved in water projects, said on the video that he was "sorry for everything that has happened" and thanked "those who are trying to help me."
What appeared to be the name of an insurgent group -- "Monitoring for Iraq" -- appeared on the screen. About 425 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq since the U.S. invasion, a Western official said late last week.
Special correspondents K.I. Ibrahim and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad and Salih Saif Aldin in Samarra contributed to this report.
