The co-founder of medical aid charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has disclosed that he performed mercy killings in Vietnam and Lebanon during a career as a doctor and aid worker.

Bernard Kouchner, now the French health minister, added that ending someone's life was "a delicate matter", made the revelations to a Dutch magazine.

"I have performed euthanasia various times. When people were suffering too much pain and I knew in advance they would die, I would help them. I did that in Labanon and I did that in Vietnam," Mr Kouchner, 61, told the weekly Vrij Nederland.

"If you switch off the treatment machine, the patient dies and I can tell you, it works.

"I gave people injections, never tablets. Injections with a lot of morphine. Some people I can still remember very well," he said.

Mr Kouchner's office confirmed that the interview was accurate.

Energetic and outspoken, Mr Kouchner rose to prominence by spearheading humanitarian missions over two decades.

In April, when the Netherlands became the first country to openly endorse euthanasia, he said he would press for it to be legalised in France too.

"I have been in so many wars and also in hospitals. It happens on a daily basis that life-prolonging equipment is being switched off," he said in the interview.

Asked what form of euthanasia he had administered, he replied: "Both passive and active euthanasia."