Bomb at Abu Ghraib gates wounds 5 Iraqis

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A suicide bomber driving a tractor blew himself up Monday near the gates of Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, wounding five Iraqi civilians in the second attack on the prison in 48 hours, officials said.

The attack came as military officials announced that a small riot broke out Friday at Camp Bucca, the other major U.S. camp for detainees in Iraq, south of Baghdad.

Twelve detainees and four guards were slightly wounded at Camp Bucca, which houses about 6,000 detainees. Detainees chanted, threw rocks, and set several tents on fire before the disturbance was brought under control, U.S. military officials said in a statement.

Camp Bucca, like Abu Ghraib, is close to its maximum capacity, U.S. officials have said. Last week, prison officials discovered two tunnels at Camp Bucca, one of them 600 feet long, dug by prisoners in a failed attempt to escape.

U.S. military officials also announced Monday that one U.S. soldier had been killed and one wounded when they came under attack with small arms in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar on Saturday.

U.S. authorities said they had few details about Monday's suicide attack in Abu Ghraib. The blast was not close enough to damage the prison, where 3,400 detainees are held, said Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a spokesman for the detainee system.

In the first attack on Abu Ghraib, on Saturday, a force of between 40 and 60 insurgents launched a coordinated assault on the prison using suicide car bombs, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms. No U.S. service members were killed in the attack, which lasted two hours, but 23 were wounded, 16 of them slightly, military officials said Sunday. Thirteen detainees at the prison were also wounded in the assault, which appears to have been an effort to break the prisoners out.

An official in Iraq's Interior Ministry said Monday that the two attacks on the prison may have been prompted in part by a letter that has circulated in Sunni mosques around Baghdad in recent days. The letter purports to be from a woman detainee at Abu Ghraib prison who says she has been raped and dishonored by U.S. soldiers and begs insurgents to attack the prison and end her misery, the official said.

The network of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for both attacks in Internet postings. In one message, the group said it had planned the main attack using "inside intelligence information" on the prison as well as photographs and surveys. The message described the attack in detail, recounting four consecutive strikes from different directions, and said 10 of the attackers had been killed.