HONG KONG, Aug 19 (AFP) - A series of videotapes shed new light on the inner workings of the al-Qaeda network, including chemical gas experiments on dogs and terrorist training tactics, CNN reported Monday.

The broadcaster said the archive of 64 tapes, which span more than a decade, show previously unseen images of Osama bin Laden and his top aides.

Virtually all the tapes, recovered from inside Afghanistan, pre-date last year's September 11 attacks, although one shows segments from televised news reports of the attacks on New York and Washington, CNN said.

Among the most disturbing images is the killing of a small dog with an unidentified white gas, which experts told CNN suggested al-Qaeda may have a more sophisticated capability than previously documented.

The broadcaster said it had shown the tapes to several experts who had told them the footage portrayed al-Qaeda operatives training in the field as they practiced assassinations, kidnappings and urban combat.

Rohan Gunaratna, an al-Qaeda expert who has addressed the US Congress, the United Nations and the Australian parliament on the terror group, said he believed the tapes were intended only for al-Qaeda eyes.

"The collection has al-Qaeda videos taken by al-Qaeda of events," Gunaratna told CNN.

"Whenever Osama bin Laden met with foreign journalists, he always had his own cameraman. And it is those tapes that are there, because that itself shows that this is the al-Qaeda library.

"This is not the library of someone else ... This is their history, the record room of Osama bin Laden."

CNN correspondent Nic Robertson said he obtained the tapes from a source in Afghanistan, following a 17-hour drive from Kabul to a remote part of the war-torn country.

According to the source, the tapes had been found in an Afghan house where bin Laden had stayed.

Some of the tapes are video training manuals with one showing how to make purified TNT from easy-to-get materials.

One scene shows bin Laden with his security detail firing shots into the air as they get set to announce their new jihad against Americans in 1998, CNN said.

The tapes also show detailed training of al-Qaeda militants with mock hijackings of vehicles, the destruction of bridges with explosives and assassinations from the back of a motorbike.

They show chemical gas tests on three dogs including the dying moments as the animals writhe in agony on the ground.

Experts quoted by CNN were unsure what kind of chemicals were being tested, some suggested cyanide while others suspected some form of nerve agent, but they said they were alarmed by the tests.

"The fact that they were able to repeat tests or demonstrations on this tape indicates that they clearly have a way to produce a predictably lethal chemical," John Gilbert, a chemical weapons specialist and arms control expert who advises the US government, told CNN.

The US government has repeatedly warned since September 11 that al-Qaeda may be trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

mp/pch

Nampa-AFP WEB story ENDS (NAMPA 190306)