KUT, Oct 9: An entire 1,200-strong Iraqi police unit fell sick and three officers died after eating a suspect meal, their commander said Monday, refusing to rule out a deliberate poisoning.

Colonel Badr al-Ziadi said his men started falling ill immediately after breaking their daylight Ramadan fast on Sunday at the Numaniyah training base in eastern Iraq, and that 60 of them had required hospital treatment.

“We are not sure whether there was something in the water or if the food was spoiled,” the commander from the 4th police division, a largely Shiite unit answering to the interior ministry, said.

A spokesman for the inerior ministry, Brigadier Abdel-Karim Khalaf, played down the incident, which he said appeared to be caused by food poisoning.

Iraq’s police force, which is dominated by Shiite officers, has become a target of choice for Sunni insurgents opposed to the US-backed government and more than 4,000 of them have been killed on duty over the past two years.

American and coalition troops have been engaged in an intensive programme to train and equip a force they hope will help pacify a country still gripped by violence more than three yeers after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

But police units continue to be tainted by corruption and brutality. Last week an entire brigade was demobilised and sent for retraining after being accused of helping death squads murder anti-government citizens of Baghdad.—AFP