Allies Pour It On in Iraq and Kuwait

Allied warplanes, flying a mission a minute, bombed deeply into Iraq on Tuesday, taking special aim at the Republican Guard and at President Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, 90 miles north of Baghdad.

For a second day, the U.S. battleship Missouri slammed the Iraqis with shells from its 16-inch guns. Six rounds silenced a long-range artillery battery as it fired on allied troops. Another 28 rounds wiped out an Iraqi radar site. At midday, the huge guns on the big ship still were firing at targets on the coastline of occupied Kuwait.

But it was the incessant bombing that was most fearsome--and 10 more Iraqi planes, possibly as a result, fled to Iran. Maj. Gen. Robert B. Johnston, chief of staff for the U.S. Central Command, said this brought the total now impounded by Iran to 110. He also said 25 more Iraqis had surrendered after hiding in the Saudi border town of Khafji since the allies recaptured it last week. This brought the allied count of Iraqi prisoners to 800.

In other developments:

* Syrian troops clashed with the Iraqis for the first time. Saudi military officers said Syrian artillery drove 30 intruders back into occupied Kuwait. But pool reports from the U.S. area of operations said the Iraqis overran a Syrian position in one attack and were pushed back by the Syrians in another.

* Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz said that nine days of allied bombing had killed 60 Iraqi civilians and wounded another 165. Baghdad Radio put the total number of Iraqi civilians killed so far at 428. The allies denied targeting any civilians. They said some might have been killed by accident.

* Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of allied forces, told CBS News that he expects another Iraqi foray like the attack on Khafji--and it will be repulsed. The Associated Press quoted him as saying in an unbroadcast part of his CBS interview that the allies will not bomb schools hiding Iraqi command posts unless “we absolutely confirm that there are no children around.”

* Guerrillas opposing America’s role in the war blew up a car outside a company providing security for the U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru, killing three security guards and seriously injuring seven other people. Officials said leaflets left at the scene had been signed by a pro-Cuban revolutionary movement.

* Oil industry and environmental experts worried that a new, strong wind might blow three oil slicks coating the Persian Gulf into desalination plants. The three slicks covered hundreds of square miles. Some of the oil has hit beaches, and fishermen said it has killed off shrimping in the Gulf.

The bombing simply never stopped. Sortie after sortie of allied planes hammered Iraq and occupied Kuwait in 24-hour cycles that kept up at a rate of 2,000 flights a day. In addition to Tikrit, the planes zeroed in on Republican Guard bunkers throughout Kuwait and Iraq. At least six of the raids were by giant Air Force B-52s.

Other warplanes attacked a convoy of 25 Iraqi trucks. U.S. officers said the trucks were destroyed. A-6 attack planes attacked two Silkworm missile launchers. The officers said these were also destroyed.

At one point, a bomb detonated an Iraqi storage facility into a ball of flame visible for miles.

“I think,” said one pilot, “that we just woke up the whole of Iraq.”

British officers reported strikes on an ammunition storage site south of Baghdad and a railway junction and bridge in southeastern Iraq. Group Capt. Niall Irving, a spokesman for the British, said a third of the key bridges in Iraq have been destroyed.

Many others, he said, have been severely damaged. Allied forces, he said, were “applying the grinding wheel.”

Gen. Johnston said supply lines are being cut. And a colleague, U.S. Air Force Col. John McBroom, commander of the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing, estimated that the fighting capability of some Iraqi ground units has been cut in half.

“The air war is absolutely getting to him (President Hussein),” he said.

In an interview with a small group of reporters, McBroom said allied warplanes were able to concentrate on ground troops because they had completed much of the work of knocking out Iraqi chemical and nuclear facilities.

“(The) Republican Guard south through Kuwait--most of the (bomb) packages are going in that area,” he said, and “big blackened holes” line some Iraqi troop positions.

Air Force F-15 fighter-bombers flying over Kuwait have not been challenged in days, McBroom said.

Syrians vs. Iraqis

On the ground, the allies and the Iraqis traded occasional artillery rounds and small-arms fire. The most significant exchange came between the Syrians and the Iraqis.

In that exchange, official Saudi briefing officers said, about 30 Iraqi soldiers tried to penetrate a northern border position late Monday. The position was manned by Syrian soldiers. They and the Iraqis exchanged small-arms fire, the briefers said, and the Iraqis fired a number of rocket-propelled grenades.

Syrian artillery forced the Iraqis to withdraw, the Saudi briefers said.

It was the first known combat for the Syrians in the Gulf War. The only other Arabs involved in ground action so far have been the Saudis and Qataris, who fought the Iraqis last week at Khafji.

Pool reports from the U.S. Marine area of operations said the Iraqis struck two separate Syrian military positions. One of them, the Marines said, was overrun and apparently occupied during the surprise attack. The other Syrian position came under artillery fire, the reports said, but turned back the Iraqi probe.

No additional details were available, and it was not known if U.S. or other allied troops responded to the Iraqi attack.

Like other Arabs in the coalition, the Syrians hold positions near the center of the line between Iraqi and allied forces, near Hafar al Batin.

Although Syria has committed several thousand troops to the allied coalition, it has been cautious in its commitment.

The government of President Hafez Assad has said it will not participate in direct attacks against Iraq. But this Iraqi attack on Syrian positions could change that.

Iraqi Protests

At the United Nations, the Iraqis protested civilian deaths in an angry letter to Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.

The letter, from Iraqi Foreign Minister Aziz, said the greatest loss of life occurred on Jan. 20, when 15 people were killed in Najibia. The letter said 19 residential buildings were destroyed by allied bombardment.

Aziz’s letter, covering casualties from Jan. 21-30, accused Perez de Cuellar of “keeping silent regarding these crimes, which for the first time in history are being committed in the name of the United Nations.”

The Aziz letter outlined a broad range of targets struck by allied planes, including the broadcasting and television building in Baghdad, where two people were hurt; the Jumhoriah Bridge, and the Central Bank, where two others were injured. Aziz said other targets were an irrigation dam, the main highway near Jordan, a medical vaccine company, a customs office and residential neighborhoods.

Aziz accused the U.N. Security Council of approving a “groundless and unjust” resolution when it authorized the use of force against Iraq in November. He accused the United States and its allies of using “pressure, blackmail and bribery” in pushing the resolution through the council.

“Indeed,” he said, “the very goals that the U.N. presumably embodies are being violated before the eyes of the U.N. secretary general, who utters not a word.”

There was no immediate reply from Perez de Cuellar, who hopes to have a role in ending the war in the Gulf.

In the past, he responded to a similar note from Aziz by saying, “I have read your letter . . . with regret and cannot but reject its connotations.” He declared that the United Nations had sought “the most honorable way” of resolving the crisis.

The Oil Spills

On the wind-whipped water of the Gulf, oil from the third war-related spill moved slowly south. Oil industry and environmental experts worry that the wind might blow it and the oil from two other slicks into desalination plants. Strong northwesterly winds heightened their concern.

They counted the slicks this way:

* The biggest slick, billed by Saudi and U.S. officials as the largest ever, was still within the war zone. The source of this slick, the allies said, was deliberate Iraqi pumping from a tanker terminal at Al Ahmadi in occupied Kuwait. Allied warplanes bombed these pumps several days ago to close them.

The experts said the slick has spread. It is more than 70 miles long and 30 miles wide, and Saudi officials estimate its size at between 7 million and 11 million barrels of oil.

* A smaller slick, the experts said, came from a leak at an Iraqi oil terminal. It too is still within the war zone--but is spreading.

* The smallest slick, said by the experts to be caused by shell-damaged oil plants near Khafji, moved south of the war zone. The experts said it has hit beaches and mangrove swamps between Khafji and the Saudi port of Jubayl. Worse, the experts said, it was lapping at protective booms around a desalination plant.

Although it was estimated to contain only between half a million and 1 million barrels of oil, its proximity to the plant made it the most dangerous of the three.

There was speculation that all this oil might be harming Iraq’s interests, as well.

Badriya Awadi, one of Kuwait’s leading environmentalists, said the oil might be fouling desalination plants in occupied Kuwait. These plants provide water for Iraqi troops.

In any case, fishermen said, the oil has killed shrimping in the Persian Gulf--an industry worth $40 million a year.

“The Gulf is out,” said Nasser O. Alsaleh, manager of the Saudi Fisheries Co. “Bye-bye, Gulf.”

Times staff writers David Lamb in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and John Goldman in New York contributed to this story.