Aug. 19, 2004 – US military police shot and killed two detainees at Abu Ghraib prison yesterday, apparently to quell a melee that had erupted within the infamous jail located just outside Baghdad.
Although details of the incident are sketchy, the US military's spokesman for detention operations in Iraq, Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, told the Associated Press that the detainees attacked another inmate with tent poles and threw rocks at US soldiers. According to Johnson, the soldiers used "lethal force" after the detainees ignored "verbal warnings" and rubber bullets. Five other prisoners were injured during the incident, but accounts vary as to how they were wounded and by whom.
