BAGHDAD, April 3: At least 44 US soldiers and 12 prisoners were wounded late on Saturday in a 40-minute assault by dozens of fighters on the US-run Abu Ghraib jail outside Baghdad, the US military said.

“What we had was a well coordinated attack of 40 to 60 insurgents on Forward Operating Base Abu Ghraib,” said Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill, the spokesman for US detention operations in Iraq.

The fighting kicked off at 7:00 pm (1500 GMT) as the sun began to set when a car bomb exploded at the prison’s southeast corner, followed by rocket-propelled grenades, small arms and mortar fire, Lt-Col Rudisill said.

“Some of the fire was from nearby buildings.”

A second car bomb went off soon after somewhere on the prison’s northern side, as the insurgents pressed their assault, he added.

US soldiers returned fire with automatic weapons and 50 millimetre calibre shells, while three Apache attack helicopters were deployed overhead but did not open fire, Lt-Col Rudisill said.

At least one insurgent was killed, he added.

Six US soldiers and one detainee were taken out to other medical facilities, with one of them flown to Germany, Lt-Col Rudisill said.

US troops had been on high alert for a rebel offensive.

“We had some intelligence something like this might happen, but we really don’t know why this large-scale attack happened tonight,” Rudisill said.

It was the biggest attack on Abu Ghraib prison, the scene of a US prisoner abuse scandal one year ago, since Jan 30 elections and a US-led offensive on the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah last November, Lt-Col Rudisill said.

The attack may well have been an attempted jail break. It follows a 40-50 man rebel ambush on a US military convoy south of Baghdad on March 20.—AFP