About 100 US special forces personnel and more than 50 Central Intelligence Agency officers have infiltrated into Iraq, The Boston Globe has reported.

The paper said the teams were searching for Iraqi Scud missile launchers, monitoring oil fields, marking mine-fields and using laser pointers to guide US pilots patrolling the northern and southern no-fly zones toward their targets.

Spokesmen for the CIA and the US military have refused to comment on the report.

According to the report, the Americans are working with fighters belonging to Kurdish factions.