The story by Pulitzer Prize-winner Chuck Philips sought to link rap music mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs to the assault on Shakur through two men the paper said were Combs' associates.

Shortly after its publication last week, Combs called the Times story 'beyond ridiculous and ... completely false.' He strongly denied any involvement in the attack.

The Smoking Gun, a website that specialises in uncovering news from legal documents and court filings, said on Wednesday it believed Federal Bureau of Investigation documents used by the Times were forgeries.

The paper launched an immediate investigation, and Mr Philips issued an apology later in the day, as did his supervisor, deputy managing editor Marc Duvoisin.

'In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job,' Mr Philips said. 'I'm sorry.'

Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton, who took the top job last month after several years of cutback-related upheaval at the fourth-largest paper in the United States, said he would launch an internal review of the documents and the reporting surrounding the story.

'We published this story with the sincere belief that the documents were genuine, but our good intentions are beside the point,' Mr Stanton said in a statement published on the paper's website.

'The bottom line is that the documents we relied on should not have been used. We apologise both to our readers and to those referenced in the documents and, as a result, in the story. We are continuing to investigate this matter and will fulfill our journalistic responsibility for critical self-examination.'

Shakur, one of rap's rising singers, survived a beating and gunshot wounds to the groin, head, hand and thigh at the Quad Recording Studios in New York City in 1994 but was killed in 1996 in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas.

The Smoking Gun story said the FBI documents were created by one of the subjects in the Times' report, James Sabatino, who is now in jail for wire fraud and racketeering.

The documents have black marks covering the name of the agent or agents who prepared them, appear as if parts were created using a typewriter and 'are nowhere to be found' in the FBI's computer system, according to The Smoking Gun. -- REUTERS