TEHRAN Riot police violently broke up a protest against new cell-type prisons on Monday, taking some 80 people into custody, the Anadolu news agency reported as quoted by DPA.

The relatives and supporters of left-wing prisoners arrived in Ankara early Monday morning from Istanbul and were arrested due to not having permission to protest.

Thirty-two people, including two gendarmes, were killed in raids at 20 prisons across Turkey in early December. The aim of the raids was to end a hunger strike by more than 1,000 prisoners who were protesting the introduction of new cell-type prisons.

The prisoners and human rights groups have warned that the new jails, to which hundreds of political prisoners have since been transferred, could lead to human rights abuses.

The government, however, says that the new prisons are needed to break up the influence of terrorist groups in the old-style prisons where inmates were housed in wards containing as many as 100 people.

Meanwhile, an AFP report quoted Anatolian news agency as saying twelve Turkish parliamentary deputies flew to Baghdad Monday to find out on the spot how Turkey can best provide medical aid to its neighbor Iraq.

The visit had been organized to "examine ways of providing medical assistance to the Iraqi population," Suat Caglayan, vice-chairman of the Turkish Parliament's Foreign Relations Committee, was quoted as saying.

He said the plane carrying the delegation also had a medical consignment aboard.

The legislators will also hold talks with Iraqi officials on trade links which Ankara wishes to boost.

Scores of aircraft have flown to Baghdad since last August in defiance of an international air embargo against Iraq.

Ankara last month raised the level of its diplomatic presence in Baghdad by appointing a new ambassador. Its NATO ally, the United States, said it regretted this.

Earlier this month an Iraqi newspaper called on Turkey to free itself from what it called the "yoke" of the U.S. and to boost cooperation with Baghdad to recoup losses suffered because of the decade-old sanctions on Iraq.

Turkey backed Western nations in the 1991 war, but has spoken out against the crippling sanctions imposed on Baghdad for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, saying it has led to a loss of some 35 billion dollars.

Turkey is mulling the idea of opening a second border crossing point to Iraq, while both countries have already agreed to open a rail link running through Syria.

Iraq, however, frequently criticizes Turkey for its incursions into the Kurdish-held north of the country to hunt Turkish Kurd rebels and for allowing Western planes to use a base in southern Turkey to patrol northern Iraq.

Some 40 British and U.S. planes are deployed at Incirlik Airbase to monitor the Northern No-Fly Zone imposed on Iraq after the Persian Gulf War to protect the region's Kurdish population.

Baghdad does not recognize the Northern No-Fly Zone, nor a similar exclusion zone in the south of the country aimed at protecting the Shiite Muslim population. Neither is authorized by any specific United Nations resolution, AFP reported.