Australian troops have been secretly deployed in a number of African countries since last years and conducting operations normally reserved to intelligence units, Fairfax media reported on Tuesday.

The news report also said the Aussie soldiers were attached with the SAS Squadron 4 - a highly trained special operations unit directly under the supervision of the Australian Defence Force.

The commando squad, Fairfax said, calls Port Phillip Bay in Victoria as its homebase, where elements of the squadron have been dispatched from since its reported creation in 2005 under the government of then Prime Minister John Howard.

But the SAS has been in existence since the early 1950s, the report said, though official acknowledgement of its operations was only confirmed by Australian authorities on 1977.

According to the report, Squadron 4 has been engaged in numerous operations in the African continent, with Fairfax pointing to Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe as the countries where the unit has conducted secret missions so far.

The squad's main functions in Africa, the report said, were to gather crucial intelligence that Australia could use in the event that its citizens were targeted by terror attacks or kidnappings, which were commonplace in the region.

Also part of Squadron 4's task is to monitor the activities of al-Shabaab in Somalia, an al-Qaeda allied terror group recently under the radar of U.S. intelligence officers for its alleged ramped up terroristic activities.

It was also understood that the SAS squad coordinates with the U.S. intelligence agency.

Fairfax reported that ASIO, the country's security service units, is currently on the trail of a possible link between Australia's Somali community and the Islamist group, with the likelihood that finances have been funnelled from the country for use on terror activities.

However, security and intelligence sources cited by the media firm had indicated that the Aussie soldiers could be conducting high-risk operations minus the umbrella of legal protection accorded to Australia's official intelligence branch, the ASIS.

Legal experts noted that the elite troops were practically sent to a theatre of operation, in which Australia is not officially at war, thus exposing them to great legal and physical hazards.

While the report said the SAS squad was trained to perform the functions of spies, the nature of their secret operations effectively stripped them of any legal cover, with the Australian government possibly hampered by limitations in case any of the soldiers were caught.

According to Professor Hugh White of the Australian National University, who also served as deputy secretary for Defence, authorities should have carefully considered the perils of the mission before sending soldiers to dangerous territories.

"Such an operation deprives the soldier of a whole lot of protections, including their legal status and in a sense their identity as a soldier," White told Fairfax.