The US forces started to free 472 prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad early Friday, witnesses said.

At least eight buses loaded with prisoners left the detention center, also focus of an abuse scandal, a Xinhua photographer said.

Men wearing Arab traditional clothes in the red-white striped buses waved their hands toward the crowd waiting there since the wee hours.

US Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, in charge of the detention system in Iraq, has pledged that the number of inmates in the prison would be reduced to between 1,500 and 2,000 from the current some 3,000. The fresh move to release 472 detainees on Friday came after the trial of Jeremy Sivits by a US special court martial in Baghdad on Wednesday.

Sivits was the first soldier tried for charges of maltreatment of Iraqi detainees. He was sentenced to a maximum one year behind bars and ordered discharged from army.

(Xinhua News Agency May 22, 2004)