New video footage of abuse in Abu Ghraib

Fresh photographs and video footage of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq were broadcast yesterday by an Australian television channel, raising fears that the revelations could further stoke Muslim fury.

Australia's Special Broadcasting Service showed the disturbing footage as Pakistani rioters attacked western businesses in Peshawar, spurred by the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Europe.

At one point in the video a chained Iraqi prisoner, apparently mentally disturbed, was shown repeatedly beating his head against a wall.

In another, a naked inmate appeared to be being squeezed between two stretchers.

Many of the pictures - depicting prisoners hooded, naked, standing in "stress" positions, threatened by a dog, showing wounds on their buttocks or dead - were similar to the photographs of abused prisoners that provoked international outrage in 2004.

But the network said it had also received other material too graphic to broadcast.

This included footage of naked prisoners made to masturbate in front of the camera. There were also "many" pictures of two prison guards - Private Lynddie England and her lover Cpl Charles Graner, who are both currently serving prison sentences - having sexual intercourse.

SBS's Dateline programme said the images had been recorded at the same time as the earlier photographs of US soldiers abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad. SBS did not say how it obtained the material, which is the subject of a legal battle in America.

A US court last year ordered the release of the images following a freedom of information lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. But the Pentagon is appealing against the decision.

As Arab networks broadcast the story at the top of their bulletins, a Pentagon spokesman criticised the SBS broadcast but refused to confirm whether the pictures were genuine.

"The department believes that a further release of images could only further inflame and possibly incite unnecessary violence in the world and would endanger our military men and women that are serving around the world," Bryan Whitman said.

He said "the abuses of Abu Ghraib have been fully investigated" and those responsible prosecuted.

Military courts have convicted nine US reservists in connection with the Abu Ghraib scandal, with punishments ranging from 10 years in prison to discharge from the army. No senior officers have been found guilty.

The grainy images broadcast by SBS show prisoners, some bleeding or hooded, bound to beds and doors, sometimes with a smiling guard beside them.

Some appear to show corpses, - apparently killed when US troops ran out of rubber bullets and used live rounds to quell a prison riot.