Three captives hanged themselves with nooses fashioned from clothing and bedsheets Saturday - the first detainees to die at this 4-year-old offshore detention center in America's war against terrorism.

The reported suicides of two Saudi Arabian captives and another from Yemen are likely to increase international pressure on the Bush administration to close the controversial prison camps, which were set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

President Bush expressed "serious concern" over the deaths and moved quickly on the diplomatic front while his administration investigates, White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

The deaths come three weeks after a brawl and two attempted suicides at the center, where some detainees have been held without charges for up to 4 1/2 years.

The three were all detainees in Camp 1, the highest maximum security prison at the center, and were participants in a wave of hunger strikes staged to protest conditions at the camp. Military officials said the Yemeni detainee had just ended a long hunger strike. All three left suicide notes written in Arabic, but military officials refused to divulge the contents, noting that the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service has opened an investigation to determine the cause and manner of death.

The United States is holding about 465 enemy combatants at the remote Navy base in southeast Cuba, 10 of whom have been charged as alleged war criminals before President Bush's military commissions.

The Pentagon postponed the military tribunal of Binyam Muhammad, an Ethiopian detainee. It was originally scheduled for this week; no new date had been set. Muhammad is charged with conspiring with Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders to attack civilians.

Bush has rebuffed calls from across the globe to close the camp, saying he is waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule this month on whether his military commissions are constitutional.

'AN ACT OF WARFARE' The commander of prison operations at the camp Saturday called the suicides "not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us. We have men here in Guantánamo who are committed jihadists, al Qaeda and Taliban, " said Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris Jr., in a telephone conference call from Guantánamo Bay. "They're continuing to fight against us here. These are dangerous men who will do anything they can to gain support for their cause." He said the men were in the same cell block but not adjacent to each other, but he also said the suicides appeared to have been coordinated, noting that the "methods of hanging were similar."

Rampant rumors in the camp may have led the men to believe the three deaths would prompt the United States to shut down the camp, he said.

"This 'three detainees must die' myth is a superstition that runs rampant at the camp, " Harris said.

Lawyers for some of the detainees, many of whom have embarked on months-long hunger strikes, said many captives have lost their will to live, given indefinite detentions and little access to the courts. They said their clients have been told they will be held in Guantánamo "forever."

"Nobody should be even slightly surprised by this, " said Josh Colangelo-Bryan, who represents a detainee who attempted suicide in October. He said one of his clients told him, "I would simply die [rather] than live here forever without rights."

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