Weather Clears, Allies Step Up Bombing Raids

The desert sun broke through cloudy skies over the Persian Gulf on Monday, opening a devastating window through which allied air forces rained bombs on Iraq and occupied Kuwait with intensified ferocity, military officials said.

Pilots flying F-16 fighter-bombers against Iraqi positions said they were still seeing hundreds of military targets, indicating that a great deal more softening up is needed before ground troops from the multinational force launch an assault against dug-in Iraqi troops.

“I know everybody wants to get it over with and get home,” said Lt. Col. Billy Diehl, 41, of Tampa, Fla. “But the longer they give us, the better it’s going to be for our guys when they roll into Kuwait.”

Marine Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal said that civilian casualties could not be avoided in air strikes on the key port city of Basra, but he suggested that Iraq may nonetheless be faking some bomb damage. Neal said the Iraqis are leading television crews to areas of the city that were destroyed in the eight-year Iran-Iraq War and claiming the destruction was the result of allied bombing in the Gulf War.

Located in southeast Iraq and described as a key staging area for supplies heading south into Kuwait, Basra is “a military town in the truest sense of the word,” said Neal. “There are a lot of military targets woven into the fabric of Basra itself.”

While again pledging every effort to minimize damage to non-military targets, Neal added: “I’ll be perfectly honest with you. There are going to be civilian casualties.”

In other developments:

* Former U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark accused the United States on Monday of committing war crimes in Iraq by causing extensive civilian casualties and damage.

* A Scud missile struck a residential area of Tel Aviv early today, injuring six people, and U.S. Patriot missiles destroyed a Scud over the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Monday. Two people were injured by flying glass when missile debris hit the ground, Saudi officials said. Earlier Monday, a Scud hit an unpopulated site in central Israel with no injuries reported.

* More than 300 guerrilla fighters from Afghanistan arrived for deployment in the war zone. A Saudi spokesman said their experience in fighting Soviet troops would be of value as the coalition faces the Soviet-trained Iraqis.

* U.S. officials reported that about 100 terrorism incidents have been aimed at American interests and those of its allies since the war began.

Air War

Two senior military officers, speaking separately and on condition that they remain anonymous, concluded that the round-the-clock hail of terror from the sky has inflicted such great casualties on front-line Iraqi troops that they have been forced to regroup.

“There are some big-time hits on some of their units,” one officer said. “I think some of their divisions have had significant damage and had to combine their forces to remain combat capable.”

The second officer said, “We think some of these units are taking extreme casualties.”

U.S. military officials said allied warplanes concentrated Monday on Iraqi troops, supply lines and naval, chemical and oil installations in the port city of Basra to deny Saddam Hussein’s army weapons, fuel and other supplies.

Pilots said they mainly saw tanks, artillery pieces and areas protected behind embankments of sandbags or earth.

Lt. Gary Cooper, 25, of Huntington Beach, Calif., said Monday that the air strikes make it easier “for us to kill them now than to have to have (ground forces) go in and root them out one by one. But it gets to the point where hunting down every last tank is virtually impossible. There’s just so much stuff out there.”

Civilian Casualties

In Baghdad, Religious Affairs Minister Abdullah Fadel reported thousands of civilian casualties as a result of the war. Previously the government said 650 civilians had been killed and 750 wounded.

Throughout the air campaign, U.S. and British commanders have insisted that their concern about holding down civilian casualties has affected every decision from the choice of targets to the types of munitions and routes of attack.

Interwoven into Basra’s residential areas and business centers, Neal said, are chemical weapons storage areas, fuel depots and “military infrastructure.”

“We didn’t put those storage points where they are, you’ve got to understand that,” said Neal. “A lot of that damage we’re seeing now might be left over from that Iran-Iraq War.”

Ramsey Clark

In New York, Clark said the damage his group saw in Iraq “was staggering in its expanse.” He told a news conference on his return from a weeklong visit to Iraq that the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent, Dr. Ibrahim Noori, estimated that between 6,000 and 7,000 civilians have died so far in the allied bombing.

“This is an attack on the people of Iraq, the economy of Iraq,” Clark said, giving an account of what he said he saw while driving more than 2,000 miles through the country, including visits to Baghdad and Basra.

“These are violations of the Hague Conventions, they are violations of the Geneva Conventions, they are violations of Nuremberg, they are war crimes,” he said, alluding to the legal code applied to Nazi leaders at trials in Nuremberg after World War II.

Clark, who served as attorney general under the late President Lyndon B. Johnson but later strongly opposed the Vietnam War, is a frequent critic of U.S. foreign policy.

Saying the U.S. military budget is four times the size of Iraq’s gross national product, he asked: “What kind of military pride could you have in beating up on a poor Third World country like that? We are raining death and destruction with our technology on the life of Iraq. And there ought to be a cessation to the bombing now.”

Scud Attacks

As Clark spoke of stopping the bombing, Iraqi forces resumed their Scud missile attacks on Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Six people were slightly injured when a Scud hit a residential area of Tel Aviv early today, and two others were slightly injured in a Scud attack on Riyadh on Monday, officials said.

In Jerusalem, army spokesman Brig. Gen. Nachman Shai said the missile hit a residential area and that there was “some damage.” He said the missile carried a conventional warhead and brought to 33 the number of missiles fired at Israel in 13 attacks. Four people have been killed and 300 wounded in previous attacks.

A U.S. Patriot missile destroyed an Iraqi Scud over the Saudi capital Monday night, and two people were injured by flying glass when missile debris hit the ground, Saudi officials said.

U.S. Army batteries fired three Patriots to intercept the Scud, which exploded in a spectacular fireball along with at least one of the Patriots, military officials said.

An Indian and an Egyptian worker were injured by glass fragments when debris hit a temporary housing complex near a university on the outskirts of the city, authorities said.

There were no further details of damage.

It was the 30th Scud fired toward Saudi Arabia since war broke out in the Persian Gulf on Jan. 17 and the 16th aimed at the Saudi capital.

The Patriot anti-missile missiles have intercepted all the Scuds heading for Riyadh, but debris has killed one person and injured 59.

Afghan Guerrillas

The Afghan guerrillas, who have been fighting the pro-Soviet government in Kabul, are expected to advise other members of the multinational force on tactics that Iraq’s Soviet-style defense may employ during a ground assault.

Saudi Col. Ahmed Robayan said the Afghan moujahedeen (holy warriors) have “expertise fighting against Russian tactics, and I think they will be very helpful.”

He said the more than 300 guerrillas belong to the Pakistan-based alliance of seven U.S.-armed Afghan resistance groups that have been fighting the Communist government in Kabul since 1978. The Saudi officer said they brought with them “small arms” and have their own command structure.

Saudi Arabia and the United States are the major backers of the Afghan resistance and have provided the guerrillas with billions of dollars in arms and assistance.

Terrorism

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said there have been approximately 100 terrorism incidents aimed at the United States and its coalition partners since the air war against Iraq began Jan. 17. She said most of the attacks have caused only minor property damage, and most appeared to have been organized by local terrorist groups not directly controlled from Baghdad.

Tutwiler said the number of incidents was “significantly higher” than the number recorded during a comparable period last year. Previously the department declined to compare the wartime terrorist situation with what would be expected in a normal year.

“Since the outbreak of hostilities with Iraq, the Department of State’s preliminary statistics show that five people have been killed in terrorist incidents and approximately 50 more have been wounded.”

Asked about complaints from the tourist industry that the U.S. government’s focus on terrorism has caused far more economic damage than the terrorists have been able to inflict, Tutwiler said, “You have to take these threats . . . very seriously, and we make no apologies about taking these threats seriously.”

Planes in Iran

Also on Monday, the U.S. slightly lifted the lid of secrecy about the more than 140 airplanes that have flown from Iraq to its now-neutral neighbor Iran since the Persian Gulf War began.

A knowledgeable military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said these planes were evacuated from the country by pilots of low caliber, that the aircraft had since been dispersed all over Iran, that maintenance capability was extremely poor and that, overall, the “threat is minimal” from these aircraft in this war.

At the same time, though, this officer said that Iraqi President Hussein’s best pilots and a mix of some of his best fighter planes and many older models are still on the ground in Iraq “as if he had a plan for them.”

In Iraq, meanwhile, Radio Baghdad announced that 17-year-old students will lose their military exemption and be drafted into the army. They were ordered to report to conscription centers between Feb. 15 and March 20. At the beginning of January, Iraq lowered the age of mandatory military service from 18 to 17 but exempted students.

Saudi military officials said the number of enemy prisoners of war in their custody now total 1,015. Another nine surrendered Monday to Syrian troops near the front lines, and Americans held 43, including 18 who surrendered in the last 24 hours.

In and around military headquarters in Riyadh, observers looked for any clue to American intentions on the ground. The only hint to emerge from military briefings was Gen. Neal’s remark that strategists are “very much” concerned that the annual sandstorm season in the Arabian desert is only a matter of three weeks or so away.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington and Carey Goldberg in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.