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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Fan blades. A curved piece of steel electrical conduit. Broken pieces of fluorescent light fixtures.

Those were the weapons of necessity for 10 detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as they fought American guards in a fierce battle on a floor slickened by a potent mixture of feces, urine and soapy water.

In the first chaotic minutes Thursday it seemed as if the prisoners might gain the upper hand on 10 members of Guantanamo's quick-reaction force, said Army Col. Michael Bumgarner, a camp official.

"Frankly, we were losing the fight at that point," Bumgarner told reporters Friday in a teleconference from the isolated detention center at a U.S. Navy base in southeastern Cuba.

Within minutes, though, the guards had taken control, aided by, among other things, five blasts of a shotgun that fires rubber pellets and pepper spray, Bumgarner said.

The clash, one of the most serious ever reported at Guantanamo, left six detainees injured and came amid more damaging political news — a call by a U.N. panel for the United States to close the detention center, saying the indefinite detention of terror suspects violates the ban on torture.

To the detention center's commander, Navy Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris, Thursday's battle between the guards and detainees, which he described as a coordinated attack, only underscored the danger posed by the approximately 460 men detained at Guantanamo Bay.

"They are dangerous men ... who will do whatever it takes to kill an American here," Harris said in the teleconference.

The clash also took place the same day two detainees attempted suicide elsewhere in the camp — the latest in a series of attempts that defense lawyers say shows the increasing despair among detainees, most of whom have been held for more than four years without charges.

"Under these circumstances, it's hardly surprising that people become desperate and hopeless enough to attempt suicide," said Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, an attorney for a detainee from Bahrain who has repeatedly tried to kill himself.

The most recent turmoil at the detention center perched above the Caribbean began Thursday morning when a detainee who failed to show up for morning prayers was found unconscious in his cell, Harris said.

Tests indicated he had taken an overdose of drugs similar to the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. He was hospitalized in serious but stable condition.

Early in the afternoon, guards searching the prison for contraband prescription medicine found another detainee "frothing at the mouth" from an overdose of drugs. He was also hospitalized in stable condition, the admiral said.

In the early evening, guards spotted a detainee in Camp Four — a medium security communal-living unit for the "most compliant" prisoners — appearing to be getting ready to hang himself with a bed sheet in the room he shared with nine other detainees.

The apparent suicide attempt "was a ruse to get the guards to enter the compound," Harris said.

As the guards and detainees fought, Guantanamo officials mustered 100 more guards before the quick-reaction force gained control using pepper spray. Bumgarner said they used unspecified "physical force," five blasts from a shotgun that fires rubber pellets and one shot from a nonlethal weapon that the military said fires a sponge-like projectile.

In two nearby rooms, meanwhile, detainees damaged security cameras and light fixtures, among other things, in a show of support for those engaged in the melee. Guantanamo officials estimated the total damage at $110,000.

Six detainees had minor injuries and no guards were injured, Harris said. The prisoners in the melee were moved to a higher-security area.

"The American guard force performed magnificently yesterday, showing remarkable restraint in the face of considerable danger," Harris said. "They were, in fact, heroic."

Regarding the U.N. report, the U.S. government insisted it complies with the world ban against torture, including at the lockup at Guantanamo. "It is important to note that everything that is done in terms of questioning detainees is fully within the boundaries of American law," White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

The United States expressed disappointment with the committee report, which was based on two sessions this month with a 25-member delegation of officials from Washington and hundreds of pages of U.S. documents.

"It's unfortunate that they don't appear to have read a good deal of that information or have ignored it, and as a result there are a number of both factual inaccuracies and legal misstatements about the law applicable to the United States," said State Department legal adviser John B. Bellinger III.

The U.N. committee also said detainees should not be handed over to any country where they could face a "real risk" of being tortured.