Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 1, 1991 TAG: 9102010790
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: IN NORTHERN SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Long
At the Pentagon, a military source said coalition air forces were attacking "a significant enemy force that is attempting to mass itself north of the [Kuwait-Saudi] border." The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, provided no figures for the size of the Iraqi force. He said allied troops were firing at "armored vehicles from a significant enemy force."
"They have kind of done what we were hoping they would eventually do," he said. "A significant force has come out from under its bunkers to prepare to come south to test allied defenses. . . . We can disrupt this formation enormously."
Elsewhere, the French said their Jaguars and Mirages targeted Iraq's tough Republican Guards, and Iran's official news agency said coalition warplanes bombed the strategic southern city of Basra and nearby towns until dawn today.
The allied air effort was getting some quiet assistance from Spain.
Despite political sensitivities, the Madrid government is allowing American B-52 bombers to use a joint air base as a staging area for raids on Iraq, Spanish military sources said today. Britain has given such permission, too.
On another front, experts were fighting a losing battle against a mammoth oil spill blackening the waters of the Persian Gulf. Oil and shipping executives said the slick was breaking up, foiling efforts to contain it.
U.S. officials said Iraq deliberately leaked the slick, the largest ever at an estimated 460 million gallons.
In the Iraqi attack 50 miles west of Khafji, three Iraqi tanks were reported destroyed Thursday by elements of the 1st Marine Divsion, pool reporters said. The Marines called in air strikes and artillery support against the Iraqi forces on the Kuwait side of the border. No U.S. casualties were reported in the battle, which came in the same area where 11 Marines were killed Tuesday night and Wednesday during skirmishing with Iraqis.
The fighting began after Marines spotted Iraqi tanks crossing south into Saudi Arabia from the Kuwaiti border town of Umm Hujul.
Marine pilots reported seeing "numerous secondary explosions" but a more concise damage assessment was not immediately available.
Fighting raged today north of Khafji, the beach town turned battleground. Khafji has changed hands twice in as many days. The Iraqis overran it Wednesday and the allies recaptured most of it on Thursday.
Today, the town was closed off with roadblocks, Associated Press correspondent Mort Rosenblum said. House-to-house searches were being conducted to ferret out Iraqi units driven back to the city's northern fringes.
Lt. Col. Mike Maloney of Boston told him that "a couple of groups of Iraqis are hanging around the desert [near Khafji], deciding whether to give up. But it looks like the Saudis are pretty much in control, and we're just supporting them."
Marines on Khafji's southern outskirts told AP correspondent Neil MacFarquhar late this morning that fighting continued between Khafji and the border six miles to the north.
Rocket and artillery fire was answered with allied air strikes. Witnesses said the road between the town and Iraqi-occupied Kuwait was still open.
The streets of Khafji, whose residents fled in the war's opening days, were littered with booby-traps and bodies. Soviet-built armored personnel carriers gutted by TOW anti-tank missiles sat smoldering, their dead Iraqi crews still inside.
The allied forces reported four dead and eight wounded in the Khafji fighting. A breakdown was not available, and no U.S. troops were reported among the casualties.
At a briefing today in Riyadh, a British military spokesman said today that more than 300 Iraqi troops have been killed in the fighting around Khafji in a "clear military disaster" for Iraq.
Saudi Gen. Khalid bin Sultan said Thursday that his troops, backed by U.S. Marines, had captured 400 Iraqi soldiers and killed or wounded another 200, and destroyed 45 armored vehicles.
Iraq claimed Thursday it had taken an unspecified number of prisoners during the Khafji battle, including some "female U.S. soldiers." Army Brig. Gen. Pat Stevens did not confirm such captures, but did say that one of two American soldiers missing elsewhere on the front was a woman.
The two were on a ground transport mission south of the Saudi border, he told reporters Thursday in Riyadh.
Baghdad radio claimed today that three allied aircraft were shot down overnight. Iraq now claims more than 180 coalition warplanes have been downed; the allies put their aircraft lost in combat at 19.
However, Pentagon sources said Thursday that a U.S. military aircraft with a crew of 14 was downed behind Iraqi lines. Members of Congress briefed by Pentagon officials said the aircraft was a modified C-130 equipped with small cannons and machine guns that went down over Kuwait.
A day earlier, Stevens had predicted Saddam would probably hit allied forces again - hard.
"I have no doubt . . . that he may very well attempt some further action," Stevens said Thursday. "He may be looking for some sort of . . . victory."
U.S. Marines had earlier reported evidence of five or six Iraqi divisions - at least 60,000 soldiers - massing near the Kuwaiti town of al-Wafra, about 25 miles west of Khafji.
Much of the ground fighting has been in darkness, and U.S. commanders in Saudi Arabia have a new concern: that Iraqi troops may be equipped with night-vision equipment.
by CNB