WASHINGTON — Twenty-five Iraqi and Afghan war prisoners have died in U.S. custody in the last 17 months, including two Iraqi detainees who may have been murdered by Americans, senior defense officials said Tuesday as the Bush administration moved to contain international outrage over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Pentagon officials released few details of the 25 deaths, which they said were among 35 cases of possible instances of prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers.
President Bush today will begin giving interviews to Arab media to help mitigate Arab -- and international -- furor over graphic photographs of naked detainees being humiliated by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. White House officials revealed that Bush was made aware in late December or early January of allegations of abuse at the prison.
On Tuesday, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made statements condemning the abuse, saying the president had demanded that those responsible be held accountable.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats and Republicans called for a congressional investigation of the military's handling of the scandal and strongly criticized the Pentagon's failure to inform lawmakers.
There also were suggestions that similar problems existed at facilities used to house Afghan war prisoners as early as 2001.
In Baghdad, the new U.S. detention chief in Iraq said Tuesday that the military planned to reduce drastically the detainee population at the notorious jail and had embarked on a broad plan to eliminate abuse of prisoners throughout Iraq.
"There were errors made. We have corrected them," Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller told journalists.
Rice, in an interview aired on Al Arabiya satellite television channel, sought to counter the fallout from the widely publicized graphic photos.
"I want to assure people in the Arab world, Iraq, around the world, and the American people, that the president is determined to get to the bottom of it, to know who is responsible and to make sure that whoever is responsible is punished for it and held accountable," Rice said.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage appeared in an interview Tuesday on U.S.-sponsored Al Hurra Arabic-language television, calling the mistreatment "despicable."
In an appearance Tuesday at the United Nations, Powell said, "What they did was illegal, against all regulations, against all standards. It was immoral."
