Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 2, 1991 TAG: 9102020281
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The U.S.-led coalition in the Persian Gulf threw "every asset we have that's capable of attacking" against an Iraqi force gathering in the desert area north of the Saudi-Kuwaiti border, Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly said.
A senior U.S. official said the Iraqi troops included roughly 7,000-10,000 soldiers, as well as tanks and other armored combat vehicles - a far larger force than the one that struck across the Saudi-Kuwaiti border earlier this week.
U.S. commanders acknowledge that they don't know for certain whether Iraq was preparing to stage a new attack.
"We can't read the Iraqi high command or Saddam Hussein's mind," Kelly told a Pentagon briefing. "We didn't see any real pattern to it. It didn't look like an arrowhead coming down the road toward Saudi Arabia."
But a senior military official said the Iraqi forces were "posturing as if they were going to move south. You could say we blunted what could have been another offensive on Iraq's part."
Heavy allied fire, including intensive bombing from B-52s and strikes by attack jets, forced the Iraqis to return to reinforced positions in the desert, officials added.
Some analysts have speculated that Iraq's ground assaults are designed to lure coalition forces into a premature invasion. But U.S. commanders have said they plan to stick to their war plan, which may call for weeks of additional bombing before a ground invasion commences.
President Bush, in a campaign-style tour of East Coast military bases Friday, made that point again.
"We will conduct this conflict on our own timetable, not on Saddam Hussein's timetable," he told families of U.S. servicemen at Fort Stewart near Savannah, Ga.
In other action, a two-day battle for the coastal town of Khafji ended with the capture of more than 500 Iraqi prisoners.
No American casualties were reported, but two U.S. soldiers - a man and a woman who may have strayed into the fighting - were still missing. The Pentagon identified Army Spec. Melissa A. Nealy, 20, as the first female U.S. soldier listed as missing in combat in the gulf war.
The Saudi command reported that 30 Iraqis were killed in the Khafji fighting, along with at least 15 Saudi soldiers.
The U.S. command said allied forces had destroyed 33 Iraqi tanks and 28 armored personnel carriers in the Wafra area west of Khafji, where Iraqi troops on Tuesday and Wednesday staged what a U.S. spokesman called "probing attacks."
With the war in its 16th day, coalition aircraft flew more than 2,500 combat and support missions. No Iraqi aircraft were spotted in the air Friday.
The destruction of Iraq's air defenses apparently has emboldened U.S. planners to launch ground-hugging Tomahawk cruise missiles in daylight. Six flew against targets Friday in Baghdad, with two of them clearly visible in videotaped reports by western newsmen there.
A CNN report showed an unsuccessful Iraqi attempt to intercept a Tomahawk in flight; Pentagon officials denied a British news report that one or two of the incoming missiles had been shot down.
Efforts to contain damage from the world's largest oil spill, which had spread for more than 100 miles across the Persian Gulf, were aided by winds from the south that pushed it away from desalination and power plants on the Saudi coast.
Officials said the slick was five to 10 miles off the coast. Two days earlier it had drifted to within three miles of shore.
by CNB