Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 25, 1991 TAG: 9102250397
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DHAHRAN, SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Medium
The huge Desert Storm offensive, striking along a 300-mile front, also swept up into southern Iraq in the largest American-led invasion since World War II.
Iraq's Republican Guard gave its first sign of life early today. About 80 tanks from the elite force rumbled south from deep inside Iraq toward advancing coalition forces, pilots flying over the battlefield said.
"They're finally flushing," said Lt. Col. Steve Turner, an F-15E fighter-bomber squadron commander. "They've got to do something - either that, or get killd in their holes."
Allied casualties were "remarkably light," said overall commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who gave no figures for U.S. dead and wounded.
By early today, more than 10,000 Iraqis had been taken prisoner, a senior U.S. military source said. No information was available on Iraqi casualties.
Led by hundreds of tanks, the troops from 11 nations raced across the desert battlefield, at times under pounding rain. Aircraft screamed in low, attacking through greasy black smoke from 200 oil field fires. Hundreds of assault helicopters streamed into Iraq carrying American airborne troops.
Some defenders tried to hold their positions. "They're fighting, they're resisting," a Marine colonel said at one point. And American military sources cautioned that days of hard fighting could lie ahead - particularly if allied forces grapple with the Iraqi army's elite Republican Guard.
But American commanders, nonetheless, could barely restrain their euphoria.
The Iraqis have proved to be "remarkably inept," said one senior military source. Schwarzkopf hailed the first day as a "dramatic success," and military planners said the early gains led him to put his troops on an "accelerated schedule."
Asked by a reporter whether the allies might be skirting Iraqi positions to hold down casualties, the Army general shot back, "We're going to go around, over, through, on top, underneath and any other way."
Hours after the invasion started about 4 a.m. Sunday (8 p.m. EST Saturday) and Baghdad came under renewed air bombardment, Saddam went on official Iraqi radio to urge his troops on. "Fight them and show no mercy," the Iraqi president said.
Iraqi military communiques later asserted that the offensive "has so far failed utterly," and claimed to have "wiped out" paratroopers dropped behind Iraqi lines in western Kuwait.
President Bush, in a television address late Saturday, announced he had ordered the attack in the "right and just" cause of freeing Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. Bush adviser Brent Scowcroft spoke of a further objective Sunday: eliminating Iraq's offensive military power.
Sheikh Saad al-Abdulla al-Sabbah, Kuwait's crown prince, said in a U.S. television interview that after liberation his country's parliament, dissolved in 1986, would be restored, and suffrage for women considered.
Besides making a direct assault on Kuwait City, strategists apparently intend to sweep up the Iraqis' western flank with U.S. and British armored units, to encircle Iraqi troops in Kuwait and perhaps pin down reserve forces - the vaunted Republican Guard - in southernmost Iraq.
The first casualties trickled into Navy Fleet Hospital Five in eastern Saudi Arabia late Sunday. One, Marine Lance Cpl. Martin Wilcox, 24, of Seattle, insisted he wanted to return to his outfit, despite the bullet that shattered the bone in his upper left arm.
Reports on battle action were sketchy, because the Desert Storm command was issuing only limited information, and dispatches from reporters in news pools at the front were slow in reaching rear areas.
The allied ground assaults were led by engineers who demolished sand berms and bridged gaping trenches with collapsible bridges.
Forward units of the U.S. 2nd Marine Division, pushing north from the frontier, reached the edge of the Kuwaiti capital.
A senior U.S. military source cautioned that street fighting in Kuwait City might take days if allied units meet stiff resistance. "It could be very slow," he said.
A Roanoke-based Marine Reserve unit of combat engineers, Company B, is part of the 2nd Marine Division.
The 1st and 2nd divisions, pushing up from Saudi Arabia's northeastern corner, at first met only sporadic resistance.
About 7:50 a.m., two of the six columns reported passing a second line of sand walls, barbed wire and mine fields, and encountered stiff resistance, reported Lt. Col. Jan Huly, 2nd Marine spokesman. But they later punched through and reached the capital.
by CNB