Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 7, 1991 TAG: 9102070266
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DHAHRAN, SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Medium
On the battlefield, the United States ambushed four fleeing Iraqi jets and Iraq blasted the sky with intense - but apparently futile - anti-aircraft fire, allied military officials said.
Iraq announced it is severing diplomatic ties with the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Baghdad radio, monitored in Nicosia, broadcast the Foreign Ministry announcement Wednesday night.
Allied jets ranged deep into Iraqi territory, and Iraq claimed 150 civilians, including 35 children, had been killed in one air raid. Baghdad radio charged the United States and its allies were bombing hospitals, mosques and houses.
"They want to expel Iraq from the 20th century," the radio said.
There was little respite, meanwhile, for Iraq's Republican Guards, the highly feared soldiers at the rear of Iraqi lines in Kuwait. An alphabetic panoply of allied attack aircraft - F-15Es, F-16s, A-6Es and B-52s - continued to unload tons of explosives on their highly fortified positions.
"He gets little sleep both day and night," Marine Brig. Gen. Richard Neal said of the Iraqi soldiers.
The allies were also trying to destroy what remained of the Iraqi air force. Ten more Iraqi planes flew to Iran, according to Neal, bringing the total there to about 120. But for the first time, the allies reported shooting down some of the fleeing planes.
U.S. Air Force pilots said they swooped in behind four Iraqi jets - two SU-25s and two MiG-21s - and shot them down with air-to-air missiles. "It was just the most spectacular thing I have ever seen," one of the pilots, who asked not to be named, said after climbing out of the cockpit of his F-15.
The allies hotly rejected Iraq's persistent claim that coalition bombers were intentionally hitting civilian targets.
The allies reported no new losses in the air. Iraq claimed it shot down six allied planes.
The allies have claimed superiority in both the air and on the sea, but the Iraqi navy showed some feeble signs of life Tuesday night. A Saudi military spokesman, Col. Ahmed al-Robayan, said one of three Iraqi patrol boats was sunk when Iraqi troops "attempted to sneak into the town of al-Khafji again," this time by water.
by CNB