Commandos inside, scouting vital sites

British and US special forces commandos have been carrying out missions inside Iraq in recent weeks, scouting sites that commanders want to ...

British and US special forces commandos have been carrying out missions inside Iraq in recent weeks, scouting sites that commanders want to take under control immediately at the start of any hostilities, sources familiar with the operations said.

Teams of British SAS troops have travelled into southern Iraq to view oil fields near Basra. Commanders hope to seize the oil fields to prevent Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from setting them afire, as he did with Kuwaiti oil fields in 1991, according to a senior British military official and a former US government official.

US and other allied teams have travelled into western Iraq, searching for mobile Scud launchers in the hopes of blunting missile attacks designed to draw Israel into the war, according to the source.

In both locations, the sources say, the covert missions have been carried out by highly mobile teams. They say the missions generally have been intermittent, with the troops travelling into Iraq from neighbouring countries and leaving again quickly to avoid detection.

This pattern of special forces activity points to some important goals of the American plan at the start of the war, which US military sources say will begin with several simultaneous steps to seize or neutralise key Iraqi facilities, denying Saddam8217;s forces their use.

A senior defence official downplayed the possibility of major ground combat units moving in the first day or two of the war, indicating instead that these missions would fall to special operations troops.

Military experts have said they believe attempts by special forces to capture oil fields, Scud launchers, and chemical and biological weapons storage sites would coincide with a massive bombing campaign that will open the war, or even precede the bombing, to prevent Saddam from any last-minute desperation tactics.

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US and British military officials refused to confirm or deny such activity. They did acknowledge that US forces, and CIA operatives have moved into northern Iraq to help prepare air-strips for use by coalition forces. These are Kurdish areas and are free of Saddam loyalists.

8216;8216;In one sense, the war8217;s already in progress,8217;8217; said Rajan Menon, a policy analyst for the Council on Foreign Relations, based in New York. LATWP