Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal worked for Israel's Mossad spy agency, providing information on war criminals and Germans working in Arab countries, according to a new book.

Israeli historian Tom Segev says in Wiesenthal - The Life and Legends, that the Holocaust survivor began working with Israeli intelligence even before the establishment of Mossad in 1949.

The book says that in 1948 Wiesenthal participated in a failed attempt to capture top Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who was later kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina and executed in Israel.

Segev says that in the 1960s Wiesenthal provided Israel information on neo-Nazis and German scientists working for Egypt's rocket programme.

Wiesenthal, who founded the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna, reportedly tracked down more than 1,000 Nazi war criminals.

He died in 2005.