30 Jordanian Refugees Killed in Bus Attack Blamed on Allies

Thirty Jordanian refugees were killed and 24 were wounded when allied planes attacked their bus as they fled Kuwait, survivors said today.

“We heard the planes come and they dropped bombs. One fell in front, one hit the bus and one fell behind,” 50-year-old Shehadeh Ibrahim Shehadeh said of the attack Saturday.

He said the bus caught fire and some of the refugees were trapped by the flames. Four children were among those burned inside the bus, he said.

Shehadeh said 54 Jordanians who had banded together to flee Kuwait were aboard the bus when it was attacked by the allied planes near the village of Melula, close to the Iraq-Kuwait border.

Shehadeh’s son Ibrahim, 24, said many of the wounded were taken to a Kuwaiti hospital. Shehadeh said he suffered slight burns and was treated in Iraq.

“It was terrible, terrible. All those poor people in the bus and the little children killed. Why?” said an elderly survivor who gave his name only as Yousef.

Six of the refugees arrived today at a transit camp just inside the Jordanian border in a car belonging to a woman they said had been driving behind the bus when it was attacked. The woman was killed, they said.