WASHINGTON — The prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during the war on terror have attacked their military guards hundreds of times, turning broken toilet parts, utensils, radios, and even a bloody lizard tail into makeshift weapons, Pentagon reports say.

Incident reports reviewed by the Associated Press indicate military police guards are routinely head-butted, spat upon, and doused by “cocktails” of feces, urine, vomit, and sperm collected in meal cups by the prisoners.

They have been repeatedly grabbed, punched, or assaulted by prisoners who reach through the small “bean holes” used to deliver food and blankets through cell doors, the reports say. Serious assaults requiring medical attention, however, are rare, the reports indicate.

The detainee “reached under the face mask of an IRF [Initial Reaction Force] team member’s helmet and scratched his face, attempting to gouge his eyes,” a May 27, 2005, report states, remarking on an effort to remove a recalcitrant prisoner from his cell.

“The IRF team member received scratches to his face and eye socket area,” the report said.

Since its creation in early 2002, the American detention camp on Cuba’s coast has been a controversial symbol of the Bush administration’s war on terror, bringing allegations of prisoner mistreatment, debates over civil rights, and a landmark legal battle to win rights for the detainees.

At one point, more than 600 foreign men captured in the war on terror were kept there. Many have been released to their home countries, reducing the current population to about 450. Ten detainees have been accused of war crimes, but no one has been tried.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the men are entitled to lawyers and access to the courts and that the administration’s original plan to give them justice through military tribunals was illegal.

Guards currently stationed at Guantanamo describe a tense atmosphere in which prisoners often orchestrate violence in hopes of unnerving their captors, especially with attacks using bodily fluids.

“I mean, seeing a human being act that way, it’s terrifying. … You are constantly watching before you take your next step to see if something is about to happen,” Senior Chief Petty Officer Mack Keen of the Navy told AP in an interview from Guantanamo.

“You see little signs. They kind of show their hand every once in a while. They’ll take their Koran, and they’ll cover it up,” he said. “When you see a group of detainees taking their Koran and putting it away, you know something is about to happen.”

A prisoner for more than two years at Guantanamo before being released to Great Britain, Moazamm Begg, 38, said he was suspicious of the Pentagon’s description of incidents, especially allegations that Islamic men tore their Korans or used sperm in attacks. The Pentagon continues to publicly question Mr. Begg’s claim of innocence.

“This just doesn’t make sense — especially since for Muslims this would be something that was disgusting, something that just wouldn’t be done,” Mr. Begg said. He added that some detainees told him they had mixed toothpaste and spit in the cocktails to make it look like semen.

Mr. Begg, who has written a book and spoken frequently about his experience, said most incidents he witnessed were spontaneous reactions “when word spread” among prisoners that a guard had done something wrong.

“I rarely saw lone prisoners acting out on their own for no reason except if they had some sort of mental illness or if they were on medication,” he said.

Nonetheless, the incident reports released under the Freedom of Information Act and reviewed by AP, provide a rare chronicle of events inside the prison from the guards’ perspective.

Entire wings of prisoners were reported to become riotous after complaints emerged that guards mishandled a Koran or mistreated prisoners. On two occasions, however, prisoners themselves were reported to have destroyed their Islamic holy books, the reports state.

“Detainee residing in cell [redacted] block tore his Koran into small pieces,” a guard reported in May 2003. A month later, a prisoner “did intentionally destroy his Koran and throw [it] out of his cell,” another report stated.

The reports detail more than 440 incidents between guards and prisoners from December 2002 through summer 2005 that resulted in recommendations of discipline, an average of about three a week. The Pentagon blacked out the names of guards and prisoners as well as the final discipline.

Often, guards went weeks without reporting problems; other times, incidents were bunched together during times of frustration and tension.

For instance, nearly a quarter of the incidents occurred in July 2005, the month in which dozens of detainees started an extended hunger strike.

Tensions likewise flared during Christmas week 2004, with inmates frequently spitting on guards. On Christmas Eve, a prisoner who was angry that he couldn’t finish his meal was said to have used a plastic fork-spoon utensil — called a spork — to attack a guard collecting his tray.

“Detainee stabbed the M.P. guard … in the hand with his spork from chow meal,” the report said, adding the prisoner later “made a slicing motion across his neck” and vowed to kill the guard.

With many nearing five years in American captivity, the prisoners “have a Ph.D. in being a detainee” and “know our procedures, and they try to turn them against us and try to make us question what we are doing,” the prison’s executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Nicolucci of the Army, said.

“They’ll take the smallest things, be it a piece of rust,” he said. “They told us they are going to take that piece of rust and they are going for the jugular. They are going for the eye. They know what our vulnerabilities are, anatomically speaking.”

Meal plates, shower flip-flops, cleaning brushes, and other items deemed harmless in civilian life also are commonly turned into weapons, the reports said. For instance:

• “Detainee in cell [redacted] grabbed the radio from an M.P.and then threw the radio at the M.P. The detainee then threw rocks at the M.P.,” a December 23, 2003, incident report stated.

• A detainee “reached out of his bean hole and attacked M.P. [name redacted] with a piece of metal foot pad from toilet striking him on the left hip area,” a July 15, 2005, report said.

• “Detainee broke off the top of his sink, subsequently broke out the window then began throwing the sink and pieces of pipes at the block guard,” a March 25, 2005, report said.

One of the most unusual incidents detailed in the 4-inch stack of incident reports occurred when a detainee in the prison recreation yard assaulted a guard with a bloody tail torn from a lizard.

The detainee “caught the iguana by the tail, at which time the tail detached,” the May 2005 report described. When the guard turned to talk to a commanding officer, “he felt something strike him in the lower right back” and then “saw the tail on the ground at his feet and blood was in the same area of his uniform.” The detainee said he was “just playing.”

Colonel Nicolucci said one of the most serious incidents occurred this May, too recent to be recorded in the Pentagon’s released reports. A prisoner staged an apparent suicide attempt while his inmates slicked the floors with human waste, seeking to overpower guards when they slipped, he said.

“We provide fans in order to keep them cool,” Colonel Nicolucci recalled. “And they were using the basket, or the grate of the fan as a shield, the blades as machetes, the pole as a battering ram.”

That disturbance was turned back in a few minutes with some guards and prisoners sustaining minor injuries, he said.

The Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group that fought to force the Pentagon to release the reports under the Freedom of Information Act, said it hopes the information brings balance to the Guantanamo debate.