New York: US Army's interrogators had alerted senior officials about abuses inflicted on detainees in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison before January, a media report said today (June 13, 2004).

A small group of interrogators at the prison began reporting allegation of prisoner abuse, including the beatings of five blindfolded Iraqi generals, in internal documents sent to senior officers.

The abuse allegations were cited by members of the prison's Detainee Assessment Branch, a unit of interrogators who screened prisoners for possible release, in routine weekly reports channeled to military judge advocates and others, the paper said.

At least 20 accounts of mistreatment were included in internal documents, 'The New York Times' said quoting military personnel who worked at the prison.

Some detainees described abuse at other detention facilities before they were transferred to Abu Ghraib, but the documents said at least seven incidents took place at the prison, four of them in the area controlled by military intelligence and the site of the notorious abuses depicted in the photographs.

The beating of the former generals, which had not been disclosed, is being examined by the Pentagon as part of its inquiry into abuses at Abu Ghraib, the 'Times' said quoting people knowledgeable about the investigation.