In another setback to the US military record in Iraq, a new set of photographs have come to light that show American soldiers using German shepherd guard dogs to threaten and apparently attack a naked Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison.

The New Yorker magazine, which published the photos, said the pictures had been held by a member of the 320th  Military Police Brigade, the same unit implicated in other  abuses at the prison, west of Baghdad.  The article was written by Seymour Hersh.

One photo shows the prisoner cowering while the dogs  barked. Another showed the same man on the ground while  displaying a bleeding wound to his leg.

If the sequence was accurately described, said the  Washington Post, it would be the first to surface from the  prison that displays an act of deliberate wounding, stretching  beyond the humiliation and acts of physical abuse of naked  Iraqi prisoners depicted in photos already published. 

Although no pictures depicting murder have become  public, the paper said, military investigators are looking  into at least two apparent slayings of prison guards since  December 2002 and 10 more Iraqi deaths, as well as 10 assaults at detention facilities under the control of Central Command.

Pentagon and Coalition forces in Iraq had no immediate comment, but spokesmen had said that the guards were obliged to follow international conventions and Army regulations that require prisoners protected against bodily injury. The codes also bar the use of torture and prohibit photographing detainees for anything other than intelligence. 

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