
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 3, 1991                   TAG: 9102030197
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

ALLIED BLAST IRAQI NAVY

Allied bombers focused attacks on Iraqi ground forces and equipment in and around Kuwait on Saturday, and U.S. officials said a series of overnight raids on Iraqi patrol boats had virtually eliminated any remaining threat from the small Iraqi navy.

With ground activity near the Saudi-Kuwaiti border described by military briefers as relatively quiet Saturday, allied aircraft pounded "targets of opportunity" in Kuwait, while maintaining their continual assault on the elite Republican Guard forces in southern Iraq. Officials said one wave of B-52 bombers "scattered" about 300 Republican Guard vehicles, which were then attacked by waiting aircraft, resulting in "fairly substantial kills" of tanks and armored personal carriers.

U.S. officials said Iraqi forces inside Kuwait appeared to have gone back into defensive positions with only sporadic fighting along the border in the wake of their unsuccessful attack on the Saudi Arabian city of Khafji earlier in the week. But U.S. planes continued to assault the Iraqi positions in a systematic air campaign designed to soften up the Iraqi forces in preparation for a possible ground war later.

"We feel confident we can focus on the KTO [Kuwaiti Theater of Operations], having achieved the kind of destruction on the strategic targets that we talked about" during the first phases of the air campaign, Marine Maj. Gen. Robert Johnston, chief of staff of the U.S. Central Command, said Saturday.

Johnston also reported one Marine was killed and two were wounded early Saturday in a cluster bomb attack that appeared to be a result of friendly fire. Officials said the location of the incident - well back from the Saudi border - appeared to rule out hostile fire, although they were still looking into it. The U.S. military also is investigating the deaths of 11 Marines earlier in the week to determine whether they were killed by friendly fire.

Two U.S. planes - an A-10 Thunderbolt tank-killing aircraft and an A-6 Intruder fighter-bomber - were shot down Saturday by Iraqi anti-aircraft fire. U.S. officials declined to specify where the planes had gone down and said they had launched a search-and-rescue mission for the downed fliers. That brought the number of allied aircraft downed since the war began to 22 - 15 of them U.S. planes and seven from other countries.

Iraq fired at least three more Scud missiles Saturday and early Sunday, two at Israel and at least one at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Both Scuds aimed at Israel apparently landed in a remote, uninhabited area of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Israeli military command reported there were no injuries or damage from the attack. The Scud lobbed at Riyadh was destroyed by a U.S. Patriot missile, officials said.

The overnight raids on Iraqi patrol boats helped ease fears among U.S. officials that the Iraqi navy, although small, could threaten U.S. ships in the northern Persian Gulf with highly accurate, French-made Exocet missiles. The Iraqis used an Exocet to hit the USS Stark in May 1987, killing 37.

by CNB