The Red Cross is sending a team to Guantanamo to "get the US version of events'' after three inmates committed suicide.

The detainees hanged themselves using nooses made of sheets and clothes. They are the first reported deaths among hundreds of men held at the base.

"A medical team will be arriving within days at Guantanamo and we will be speaking to authorities and inmates," Red Cross spokesman Vincent Lusser told Gulf News from Geneva last night.

"We were told about the deaths in our Washington office on Saturday and we are getting a team ready to go. We are obviously concerned about the inmates and their families."

One topic the Red Cross will raise is the mental health of detainees who face the threat of infinite confinement, without trial or access to legal representation. "It is a huge emotional strain for the inmates," Lusser said.

The Red Cross will also want to know how the inmates were able to actually prepare and commit suicide in one of the most heavily guarded areas in the world.

Only 10 have been charged with crimes and there has been growing international pressure on the US to close the prison.

Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found dead shortly after midnight on Saturday in separate cells, said the Miami-based US Southern Command.

"They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bed sheets," base commander Navy Rear Adm Harry Harris said in a conference call from the US base in southeastern Cuba.

"They have no regard for human life," he said. "Neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us." Military officials said the men had been held in Guantanamo Bay for about four years.

"They're determined, intelligent, committed elements and they continue to do everything they can ... to become martyrs in the jihad," said Gen John Craddock, commander of the Miami-based US Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison.

There are about 450 prisoners still held there. The Red Cross insists it has access to all the prisoners. There have been allegations that some ghost detainees have been held at Guantanamo.

"We were not there so we cannot and do not comment publically about events in Guantanamo" Lusser said "but the welfare of the prisoners is the responsibility of the US, obviously."

Independent reports based on the Pentagon's own figures indicate that fewer than 55 per cent of the prisoners are even accused of committing actions against the US or its allies.

Many of those held were captured not by US forces but by groups in Afghanistan at a time when a bounty of $5,000 was being offered for terror suspects. The scope for abuse, for old rivalries to be settled, was immense, rights lawyers believe.

In Washington, meanwhile, President George W. Bush expressed "serious concern" after learning that three "war on terror" detainees committed suicide at the Guantanamo prison camp, the White House said Saturday.

Bush was briefed about the incident by US Secretary Condoleezza Rice and later had an intelligence briefing with national security adviser Stephen Hadley and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, said Bush spokesman Tony Snow.

"He expressed serious concern," Snow said of Bush's reaction. "He also stressed that it was important to treat the bodies humanely and with cultural sensitivity," he said.

One topic the Red Cross will raise is the mental health of detainees who face the threat of infinite confinement.