BAGHDAD, May 18: The British news agency Reuters said on Tuesday that three of its Iraqi employees had suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of US soldiers at a base near Fallujah.

The employees informed the agency right after their release in January but only decided to go public after the US military insisted there was no evidence to back up the abuse charges, the agency said in a statement.

All three said they were humiliated and photographed during their ordeal. Cameraman Salem Ureibi, freelance journalist Ahmed Mohammed Hussein al-Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar al Badrani were arrested on Jan 2 as they covered the downing of a US helicopter near Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

They were released without charge three days later. Ureibi said soldiers told him they wanted to have sex with him and that he feared being raped during his detention. Reuters said it wrote to the US commander of ground forces in Iraq, Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, to request the inquiry.

The general replied the probe had been "thorough and objective", although the three Reuters employees had not been questioned. The agency has since asked the Pentagon for a review of the findings, but has received no response.

"When I saw the Abu Ghraib photographs, I wept," Ureibi said on Tuesday. "I saw they had suffered like we had."-AFP