Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 7, 1991 TAG: 9102070560
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DHAHRAN, SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Long
Off the coast of Kuwait, the USS Wisconsin followed the lead of its sister battleship, the Missouri, firing its 16-inch guns in battle for the first time since the Korean War. The Wisconsin turned its big guns on an Iraqi artillery position, military sources in the Saudi capital said today.
Also today, the U.S. command in Riyadh reported two Iraqi helicopters had been shot down by American planes, and said one U.S. Army UH-1 Huey crashed from non-combat causes, killing one soldier and injuring four.
There were violent rumblings away from the gulf, as well. In Adana, Turkey, a gunman shot to death a U.S. civilian employed at an air Jordanian leader backs Iraq, denounces U.S. A4 40,000 in Va. volunteer to treat casualties. B1 VMI Marine regrets missing the war. B1 base used for bombing raids on Iraq. Dev Sol, an underground leftist organization, claimed responsibility and said Turkish bases "cannot be used for the bloody games of U.S. imperialism."
Allied warplanes kept to their round-the-clock pace today, roaring off to unload their bombs on Saddam Hussein's forces, including dug-in ground troops and their supply lines. French, Italian and Qatari warplanes were among those flying bombing sorties.
A British commander said today that Iraqi gunners are putting up a tougher fight against allied bombers, firing more anti-aircraft and surface-to-air missiles than earlier in the Persian Gulf War.
Iraqi forces also have devised new tactics to detect incoming aircraft, apparently involving radar, said Group Commander David Henderson, who heads two squadrons of Royal Air Force fighter-bombers at an air base south of Kuwait.
France's new defense minister, Pierre Joxe, said today allied bombings have "certainly caused thousands of deaths" in Iraq, but he did not say if they were all military. U.S. officials have refused to provide any estimates of casualties among enemy forces.
Joxe also announced that France was replacing the commander of its ground forces in Saudi Arabia, Gen. Jean-Claude Mouscardes, for medical reasons. He added that French forces would be on the front lines of any ground campaign.
Iraqi officials said the overnight raids on Baghdad killed 22 civilians and injured many others. AP correspondent Salah Nasrawi, in the Iraqi capital, said the air strikes went on for 12 hours, hitting offices and homes.
Ra'ja Hamie, a resident of Baghdad's al-A'eamiya district, said her husband and three of her children were killed when a rocket hit their home. She and her two other children were injured.
"We all were asleep in one bedroom when the ground was shaken beneath us and suddenly we were engulfed in a fire," she said from her hospital bed.
Iraq says allied bombings have killed hundreds of civilians since the war's outbreak, but allied military officials said today that Iraq is deliberately putting non-combatants in harm's way - by moving anti-aircraft guns into civilian neighborhoods in Baghdad and Kuwait City.
Saddam "is quite deliberately deploying his weapons among civilians with the precise aim of killing civilians, and quite successfully I might add," said Lt. Gen. Peter de la Billiere, the commander of British forces in the gulf, speaking in Riyadh.
U.S. military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said none of the Iraqi gun positions in civilian neighborhoods had yet been attacked, but said the matter was under review.
Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. attorney general who was in Baghdad today on a private visit to see the results of U.S. bombing raids, said he saw many Iraqi civilian casualties.
Clark, a longtime peace advocate, said he visited hospitals and residential neighborhoods in the port city of Basra, which is the Iraqi military headquarters and a major target of the allied raids.
"I personally visited four residential sections where in the last 10 days more than 100 people were killed," Clark said on CNN. "There was no pinpoint bombing there." Clark said he saw no military targets in the devastated residential areas.
Baghdad radio, meanwhile, broadcast a commentary after today's air raids, saying Iraq "is waiting impatiently" for a ground war to begin.
"The number of Americans killed will exceed tens of thousands if a ground battle occurs with Iraqi forces . . . which are trained in defensive combat to an extent that no other force in the world has reached," the radio said.
But, in the war's fourth week, top U.S. military strategists said they're in no hurry to start a ground battle. Out on the gritty, sand-whipped front lines, there was foreboding about fighting to come.
"From here, you can see the bomb flashes at night," said a U.S. military officer deployed near the northern Saudi frontier. "This could get very ugly at any moment."
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were to head for the gulf tonight to get a first-hand look at the readiness of U.S. forces for a ground offensive.
On Wednesday, Cheney and Powell briefed members of Congress in a closed-door meeting, and one key lawmaker, House Minority Leader Robert Michel, R-Ill., said afterward that "there seems to be no rush" to a ground war.
Secretary of State James Baker painted perhaps the grimmest picture yet by the Bush administration of what a land battle would be like.
"Tough times lie ahead," he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday. "The task is formidable, and no one should underestimate Saddam's military capabilities."
In the desert war zone, reporters who toured a major U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday for the first time were given a look at sophisticated and deadly weapons, including the so-called fuel air mines.
Dropped from the air, they release and then ignite a cloud of flammable mist, creating an explosion resembling a small nuclear blast. Maj. James McClain said the explosives have not yet been used against Iraq.
What has been used is more conventional firepower, and U.S. strategists are closely watching the bomb damage done to Iraq's formidable Republican Guard.
by CNB