BAGHDAD: The US military said on Saturday it has freed more than 10,000 people from its two detention centres in Iraq so far this year — over the 8,900 released during 2007.

A military statement said there are currently around 21,000 detainees in the two centres — Camp Cropper near Baghdad's airport and Camp Bucca near the southern oil city of Basra.

This is down from a peak of around 26,000 in mid-2007, when a “surge” of US troops arrested scores of people daily as they moved to quell sectarian fighting unleashed when insurgents bombed a mosque in the central city of Samarra in February 2006.

—AFP

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