New images of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison prompted Iraq's president to condemn his close ally the United States yesterday, demanding harsh punishment for "savage crimes" as Iraqis seethed over more humiliation.

In unusually strong language, Jalal Talabani lashed out at Washington as the new images were digested by Iraqis and other Arabs already enraged by insulting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad () which were published in European newspapers.

"We have condemned these savage crimes. We reject that a civilised country allow its soldiers to commit these ugly and terrible crimes," Talabani told reporters.

"We demand very harsh punishments against the perpetrators."

Images of humiliated prisoners infuriated Iraqis and some predicted they would play into the hands of Saddam Hussein, whose chaotic trial has embarrassed the US-backed government.

Australia's Special Broadcasting Service's Dateline programme said the images were recorded at the same time as the now-infamous pictures of US soldiers abusing Abu Ghraib detainees which sparked international outrage in 2004.

Some of the pictures suggest further abuse such as killing, torture and sexual humiliation, Dateline said.

Iraqi passions had already been running high since a British newspaper released a video earlier this week that appears to show British soldiers beating Iraqi teenagers in 2004.

In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the latest images of abuse at Abu Ghraib showed clear violations of international humanitarian law.

"We are shocked and dismayed at the mistreatment and abuse displayed in these images," ICRC spokeswoman Dorothea Krimitsas told Reuters in Geneva.

US military spokesman Major General Rick Lynch played down the latest images of Abu Ghraib, once one of Saddam's most feared prisons.

"We believe they realise that these pictures are pictures of events that happened before, that it was an isolated event and that the people involved in that have indeed been punished," he told reporters.

Iraq's interior ministry has said it was investigating reports of a "death squad" within the police force that targeted the Sunni Iraqis.

The move came after US Major General Joseph Peterson, in charge of training the Iraqi police, told the Chicago Tribune newspaper that 22 policemen, dressed in police commando uniforms, were arrested in late January in Baghdad as they took a Sunni away to be shot. Death squads have also been responsible for many deaths in Iraq's main southern city of Basra, a British officer said yesterday.

PHOTO CAPTION

This handout photo from SBS TV shows a hooded and bound prisoner being attacked by a dog in Abu Ghraib prison, during interrogation by US soldiers. (AFP)