WASHINGTON, June 11: High-ranking US intelligence officers authorized the use of ferocious dogs to intimidate prisoners at Iraq's notorious Abu Gharib prison, newspaper reports said on Friday.

A report published in The Washington Post and other US news outlets said prison authorities were also asked to remove the muzzles before using the dogs to threaten prisoners.

The report is based on sworn statements dog handlers provided to military officials probing prisoner abuses at Abu Gharib. The handlers said that the dogs were so frightening that some prisoners urinated in their trousers when they threatened to let the dogs lose at them.

The report quotes a prisoner, Ballendia Sadawi Mohammed, as telling officials investigating prison abuses: "They sent the dogs toward me. I was scared. The first dog bit my leg (it) caused me to have 12 stitches."

A US soldier Sabrina D. Harman, said she saw the incident and said the dog bit the detainee twice, once on each leg. The pictures shown on US television channels and published in newspapers show snarling dogs being held inches from recoiling, kneeling prisoners with their hands tied behind their backs.

On Friday, the Washington Post published three pictures along with a long, full-page article. One picture shows a dog handler approaching a naked Iraqi prisoner with a huge, black dog. The other shows a prisoner with injuries on both legs.

The third picture shows a US soldier giving the "thumps up" sign while stitching a prisoner's leg wound. The captions said it was not clear if all these injuries were from dog bites.

Despite the soldiers' insistence that they were following orders, no military officer has been charged in the abuse scandal. So far only seven soldiers have been charged with committing abuses against Iraqi prisoners.

The statements published on Friday appear to be the first clear indication that some prisoner abuse was authorized by higher-ups. Sergeants Michael Smith and Santos Cardona, both dog handlers at Abu Ghraib, told investigators that in December and January military intelligence officers asked them to bring their dogs to help in questioning detainees.

They named Col. Thomas Pappas, the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, as having told them that the military intelligence had approved the use of dogs in interrogations.

The Washington Post reports that Col. Pappas later told investigators that a two-star general had personally "Okayed" the use of "unmuzzled dogs" for interrogations. The newspaper also has obtained copies of internal army memos showing that senior-ranking military officers were not only aware that dogs were being used to intimidate the prisoners but they also approved these measures.