It said Stern reporters had found a three-volume manual listing successful experiments using toxic agents such as ricin and various cyanide mixtures, as well as explosives.

Other attempts to make mustard gas and the nerve agent VX however appear to have failed.

Stern did not specify the exact location of the Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) camp.

Last week, a US special forces team claimed to have destroyed the facility in the southeast of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

Ansar al-Islam is a Taliban-style group which emerged in late 2001 and has been blamed for a spate of suicide bombings and assassinations.

Its presence in mountainous terrain between Halabja and the Iranian border was one of the many reasons given by Washington as justification for a war on Iraq.

The group featured in a presentation to the UN Security Council in February by US Secretary of State Colin Powell who claimed it could channel weapons of mass destruction allegedly held by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

According to Stern, the manual also listed exactly how many hours, minutes and seconds it took for the animals and people being experimented on to die.

In one case, arsenic gas, also known as arsine, and phosgene, which causes severe respiratory problems, led to a person in a closed room dying in half a minute.

Other experiments included trials with explosives ranging from the military RDX to a mixture of ammonium nitrate, aluminium powder and ... coffee.

Stern said Islamic extremists were instructed at the camp about everything from shooting and kidnapping to suicide attacks.

US special forces officers had already said last week after taking the camp that they had found evidence of chemical or biological weapons activity.

SPACE.WIRE