Allies Accuse Iraq of ‘Execution Campaign’ : Atrocities: U.S. military says Iraqi soldiers are killing Kuwaiti civilians to destroy evidence of torture.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia —  Allied commanders accused Iraq on Saturday of conducting “a systematic campaign of execution” in occupied Kuwait, which a variety of reports suggested is suffering an intensifying devastation by the Iraqis.

“This is terrorism at its finest hour,” said Marine Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal, U.S. military spokesman in Riyadh, charging that Iraqi soldiers were killing Kuwaiti civilians previously subjected to torture. “They are executing people on a routine basis, people not connected with the resistance. They may think the game is up and they are trying to destroy the evidence (of torture), and that evidence is the people.”

In Washington, Rear Adm. John (Mike) McConnell, director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that analysts estimated that 2,000 to 10,000 Kuwaitis had been arrested and in some cases raped, tortured and mutilated.

“The perpetrators of those crimes will have to answer for it,” said Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs.

In Los Angeles, Kuwaitis in exile said reports from the resistance in their country had characterized the mood of citizens there as a mixture of dread and hope. The latest round of Iraqi atrocities was viewed by many Kuwaitis as the sad but expected prelude to freedom.

Besides the reports of the human toll of the Iraqi occupation, McConnell said 300 of Kuwait’s 1,200 oil wells had been sabotaged by Iraqi troops. About 100 of the wells were destroyed, with the fires already burned out, while 200 remained ablaze. Iraq contends allied bombing set the wells afire. Heavy plumes of thick black smoke hung over the ravaged emirate.

In Washington, the Kuwaiti Embassy released the contents of cabled reports it had received over the past few days. The reports indicate that eyewitnesses in Kuwait believe that Iraqi soldiers are under orders to arrest 40,000 Kuwaitis--particularly teen-age boys and men under 40 years old--possibly for use as human shields in anticipation of a ground war.

“Today is another bad day. . . . Nobody is now going out walking or by his car. But we are very much worried of the next step, which might be very soon, and that is that they might come to the houses and take the Kuwaiti citizens from their houses,” one report said.

In Kuwait city, large explosions could be heard over a wide area of the central business district, exiled Kuwaitis in Cairo reported. After speaking by satellite telephone to members of the anti-Iraq resistance in Kuwait city, one exile told Reuters news agency that the Iraqis “seem to have started destroying downtown Kuwait.” The report could not be independently confirmed.

The embassy also relayed grisly accounts that prisoners have undergone torture, including the gouging out of their eyes, cutting off women’s breasts, plunging drills into prisoners’ bodies and inflicting electric shocks to their feet. Some reportedly have been shot, decapitated or hacked to death.

These reports also said that Iraqi troops are confiscating cars and other items of value, possibly sending them north to Iraq. In some cases, the Iraqis are said to be releasing their prisoners for huge ransoms.

Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, said that as many as 8,000 Kuwaitis have been killed since the Iraqi invasion last August, and another 11,000 have been reported missing. “We believe between 5,000 to 8,000--it’s very hard to confirm until we get there--were killed, mostly by mass execution or punishment . . . or interrogation,” he said.

Saudi and U.S. officials apparently hope that reports of Iraqi atrocities and oil-field sabotage will work against Hussein’s seeming goal of emerging from the Gulf War as a hero in the Arab world. “This is a terribly important point in the psychology of the situation,” said a Saudi source in Washington.

In Kuwait, residents’ morale “is high . . . because they hope for liberation,” said Qusay Shatti, a volunteer at Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a group based in Washington. This is true, Shatti said, despite the belief that the ground war will produce “horrendous human casualties, and maybe a big amount of Kuwaiti civilians will be killed.”

Anwar Ali, a student at Claremont College, observed: “From the begining, they (the Kuwaitis) were cheering every bomb that was hitting from the allies. And I assume this feeling has prevailed along. Now, people are so worried and frightened that some of their families would be rounded up. But in terms of forces attacking Iraqis, they are cheering them on.”

After more than six months of brutal occupation, living conditions are horrendous inside Kuwait, said Adnan Saleh, an investment adviser in Los Angeles. With medical care almost non-existent and food scarce, “They’ve just had it with the Iraqis,” he said.

Like many Kuwaitis here, Fahed Bouresli, a 25-year-old student at Chaffey College, said weeks have passed since he received word of the fate of his relatives inside Kuwait. He described the latest reports as “scary” and the feelings of Kuwaitis as “confused. It’s getting worse and worse inside Kuwait,” he said.

The devastation of Kuwait clearly had already begun before allied ground forces crossed over from Saudi Arabia early Sunday.

Oil fires raged throughout the country, sending a huge plume of greasy black smoke billowing south into Saudi Arabia. “Kuwait is on fire,” said Col. Hal Hornburg, a U.S. Air Force pilot who overflew the emirate. “Southern Kuwait looks like what hell must look like. If Saddam Hussein says he has not set that country on fire or torched it off, don’t be misled. He has.”

The smoke cloud is so thick that pilots must navigate by instruments, Hornburg said, while the night sky is ablaze with oil well fires. One fire, he said, was visible from 100 miles away.

In Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, after word spread that the allied ground offensive had begun, officials from Kuwait’s Office of Information hung up a large Kuwaiti flag and attached to it an inscription: “Next Stop, Kuwait City.”

“We are extremely pleased that the agonies of our people inside have started to be lifted. (But) we are extremely concerned about the safety of our people inside,” said Kuwait’s deputy information minister, Hasan Sanade. “We’re feeling pleased that the eviction of the Iraqi troops has started, but this pleasure is mixed with great concern.”

Solidarity International for Kuwait, a group of Kuwaiti exiles connected to the Kuwaiti government, reported that Kuwaitis ages 15 to 55 are being arrested and taken to Iraq as prisoners of war. Resistance members quoted in the report said they found the body of a 19-year-old Kuwaiti girl in the Kaifan area. Another girl was reportedly killed with an ax blow to the head and her body was dumped in front of her parents’ house.

“Never before has a nation suffered so much in such a short period of time,” Kuwait’s planning minister, Sulaiman Mutawa, told the U.N. Human Rights Commission on Friday in Geneva.

While electricity and water service to the Kuwaiti capital apparently have been restored, there are reports of widespread food and medical shortages. Kuwait’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Abulhassan, said that the more than 200,000 Kuwaitis still inside the country are suffering “generalized starvation” because of shortages. “They have been deprived of all foodstuffs apart from what they had in reserve, which they had to share with the Iraqi army,” he said.

Lamb reported from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Broder reported from Washington. Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Jack Nelson and Karen Tumulty in Washington, Kim Murphy in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and Scott Harris in Los Angeles.