LONDON (Reuters) - Documents giving details of how to build a nuclear bomb have been found in a looted Kabul house used by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, The Times newspaper reported on Thursday.
The paper said its reporter had discovered the partly burned papers in the building abandoned by Al Qaeda as the city was overrun by fighters from the Northern Alliance.
Notes in Arabic, German, Urdu and English described the detonation of explosives to compress plutonium and trigger a thermonuclear reaction, the paper said.
Bin Laden, accused by the United States of masterminding the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, has claimed to have a nuclear bomb -- a claim dismissed at the weekend by British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon.
Hoon said that while the intelligence services believed Al Qaeda might have got hold of nuclear material, they did not believe it had managed to build a nuclear bomb.
The Times said it found other papers giving instructions on how to build smaller bombs and on the development of a ''supergun.''
The house had been used as a staging post for Al Qaeda trainees before the fall of Kabul, it said.
``The documents lay strewn around the top floor, along with copies of aircraft magazines advertising flying instruction manuals, navigation instruments and flying charts,'' it said