03 May 2004	Monday	12 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

BAGHDAD, May 2: The US-led coalition faced continuing outrage on Sunday over reported abuse of Iraqi prisoners at its jails, as 11 more soldiers, including nine Americans, were killed in less than 24 hours , overriding relief at the escape of a US hostage held for more than three weeks.

Truck driver Thomas Hamill, 43, fled his captors and flagged down a passing US patrol some 65 kilometres from the outskirts of Baghdad where he was kidnapped on April 9 after a convoy ambush, his wife and US officers said.

The coalition said he was in good health and was taken to a northern military base where he telephoned his family in the United States. "He sounded wonderful," his wife Kellie Hamill told a US television network. "He was more worried about us than he was about himself."

The release of the contractor provided some welcome good news for the coalition after days of shame over allegations of widespread abuse of prisoners at US-run jails. The New Yorker magazine printed details of a leaked copy of a 53-page report on the military prison system in Iraq by Maj-Gen Antonio Taguba which said there were "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at the jail.

Human rights groups demanded an independent inquiry after allegations that US military intelligence ordered the abuse to extract information from Iraqis detained since the March 2003 invasion of their country.

The images shown on US television depicted prisoners, some naked, in humiliating, sexually suggestive poses. Some of the pictures showed US military personnel pointing and laughing at prisoners.

The US military has launched three separate inquiries and six US staff at the jail have been charged with criminal offences, but Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen Richard Myers said such abuses were not systematic.

British tabloid the Daily Mirror also published a front-page picture on Saturday showing British troops apparently urinating over a hooded Iraqi prisoner in a camp near Basra. Sunni leaders in Iraq said the abuse constituted war crimes and there were widespread calls for an independent investigation.

"There must be a fully independent, impartial and public investigation into all allegations of torture. Nothing less will suffice," said human rights group Amnesty International. "Our extensive research in Iraq suggests that this is not an isolated incident."

As anger grew in Iraq and across the Arab world at the graphic pictures of the prisoner abuse, the killing continued fewer than two months before the planned handover of sovereignty to the Iraqi people.

Nine US servicemen were killed on Sunday, including six in a mortar attack on a military base in the western Al-Anbar province, taking the US military death toll to 751 since the invasion. More than 10,000 Iraqis are also estimated to have been killed.

A senior US military official in Iraq warned on Sunday that there was no end in sight to the Iraqi resistance, predicting violent attacks would carry on through national elections scheduled for January.

Besides, a United Nations team has arrived in Iraq to prepare for elections. UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is due in the country later this week as he struggles to find agreement on how the first post-Saddam Hussein government might be formed.

In a sign of the fraught security situation, a repeatedly cancelled trade show due to have taken place in Baghdad was being moved to a new venue in Turkey. However, tensions appeared to be easing in Fallujah on Sunday after an agreement to allow a new Iraqi military force to take over from troops to police the city after weeks of fighting that has seen dozens of US troops and hundreds of Iraqis killed.

At noon, a respected sheikh and tribal leader drove through the various checkpoints put up by the fighters resisting the US forces within the city and ordered them to go home. "There is an agreement. The battles are over now and you should go home and leave your weapons and go back to your normal life," the sheikh, who declined to give his name, told a group of guerillas.

A standoff continued at Najaf where Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr is holed up surrounded by coalition troops. Talks were continuing to end the crisis but the United States has refused to negotiate with him directly. It believes he has only a small following and presents no long-term threat to the country.

Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan told a US television programme: "The (UN Security) Council will probably authorize a multinational force to remain in Iraq to help create a secure environment" after June 30. -AFP