In the opening hours of the war against Iraq, American and Australian forces flew deep into the country and seized or destroyed specific command posts to prevent officers there from ordering the use of chemical and biological weapons, according to officials of the coalition forces.
The outposts were selected for urgent, risky attacks because intelligence agencies had reported that the field commanders had operational control of those weapons, and might have been given authority by Saddam Hussein to use them even if he were killed or could no longer communicate his orders.
Officials stressed that no chemical or biological weapons were stored at the command centers that have been attacked thus far in the campaign. The Iraqis have denied having such weapons.
Officials who described the covert operations said they could not reveal how the targets were chosen, where the outposts were or how many of them there were, as those details remained sensitive while the invasion of Iraq was still under way.
The use of special operations forces in the attacks, though, is a sure sign that coalition commanders viewed the targets as unusually significant, not the ordinary kind of outpost that might be easily destroyed by bombing.
Sending highly trained, specialized troops secretly to do the job is a complex and dangerous mission, and the troops assigned to it are used only for extremely important jobs. An added advantage of striking in this way is that it makes it possible to take prisoners and seize evidence that could point the way to other command posts or to the weapons themselves.
In one mission, Australian commandos were discovered by the Iraqis and fought a skirmish that injured or killed more than 10 Iraqis, the officials said.
"We don't know where Saddam is or whether he's able to communicate," said one senior official with detailed knowledge of the covert operation. "But we know we got to these command centers before anyone there had time to do anything."
Australia's commander in the region, Brigadier General Maurie McNarn, mentioned the operation by Australian Special Air Service commandos to reporters in Qatar on Friday.
He said that his forces had moved "deep inside Iraq" for several days.
"Their primary role is strategic reconnaissance, although in some cases where there are command and control nodes which are used for communications for controlling WMD," he said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction. "We will in some cases have taken direct action against those."
He said one of the squads had "wounded a number" of Iraqis, but other officials said they believed some of the Iraqi forces had been killed.
At the Pentagon Saturday, one senior official said, "Those places are going down all over" Iraq.
Senior military officials said Saturday that bombs and missiles fired by coalition aircraft had hit such targets as missile launchers and artillery batteries thought to be capable of firing chemical weapons, along with the communications equipment at those locations.
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