Four US Marines have been killed in action, it was reported Monday. Three were killed and two others were wounded Monday while conducting "security and stability operations" in northern Babil province. US military officials in Baghdad also reported Monday that a Marine was killed on Sunday in Anbar province.
Meanwhile, American guards opened fire Monday on prisoners during a riot at the main detention facility for security detainees, killing four of them, the U.S. command said. According to The AP, six other prisoners were wounded.
The riot broke out shortly after noon at the Camp Bucca internment facility near Umm Qasr in southern Iraq, the command said in a statement.
"The riot quickly spread to three additional compounds, with detainees throwing rocks and fashioning weapons from materials inside their living areas." the statement said. "Guards attempted to calm the increasingly volatile situation using verbal warnings and, when that failed, by use of non-lethal force."
"After about 45 minutes of escalating danger, lethal force was used to quell the violence," the statement added.
The statement said the riot "resulted from both the use of force to control the situation and from violence by other detainees within the camp during the riot."
"The cause of the riot and use of lethal force is currently under investigation by the chain of command and the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigations Division, which is standard procedure whenever a detainee death occurs," the statement added.
