Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 13, 1991 TAG: 9102130651
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DHAHRAN, SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Medium
The number of deaths would be the single biggest loss of civilian life reported in the Persian Gulf War.
The U.S. military command said the bunker had been recently painted in camouflage colors and was used by the Iraqi military command.
"We don't feel we attacked the wrong bunker or we made a mistake," Marine Brig. Gen. Richard Neal told reporters in Riyadh. "I can't explain if there were civilians in there why they were in there."
The deaths occurred during a 12-hour bombardment of Baghdad. One of the buildings hit - the Palace of Conferences - is across the street from the al-Rashid Hotel, where a Soviet envoy on a peace mission was staying. The diplomat met Tuesday with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
As the war turned 4 weeks old, Soviet diplomatic efforts to end it picked up with the announcement of plans for Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz to meet in Moscow with President Mikhail Gorbachev. Sunday's trip would be a follow-up to envoy Yevgeny Primakov's visit, the Kremlin said.
After meeting with Primakov, Saddam announced Iraq might be willing to talk. However, the White House noted he said nothing about the central issue in the conflict - ending Iraq's occupation of Kuwait.
At the United Nations, diplomats were gathering today to consider whether the allies had exceeded the U.N. mandate against Iraq.
The air campaign continued at a relentless pace, with 2,800 sorties in the previous 24 hours, Neal said today.
During one mission over Iraq, a Saudi F-5 Tiger 2 was lost and the pilot was missing, Saudi Col. Ahmed al-Robayan said. It was the second Saudi plane lost.
Kuwait's air force used Gazelle helicopters today for the first time in the war, damaging two tanks, exiled Defense Minister Sheik Nawaf al-Ahmed said.
Despite the bombings, U.S. military officials said Iraq has managed to rig makeshift military communications and supply links. They said Iraq was drawing on battlefield experience from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
The reinforced structure hit in Baghdad today also was a legacy of that war: It was one of five big air raid shelters built in the capital during that conflict. Neal said it had been upgraded to a hardened command and control bunker used for communications.
"If we thought that in fact there were civilians . . . absolutely no, we would not have attacked that bunker," Neal said.
"From a personal point of view, I'm outraged that civilians might have been placed in harm's way and I blame the Iraqi government and the Iraqi leadership for that," he said.
Iraqi witnesses said the shelter in the middle-class residential al-Amerieh district took direct hits from at least two missiles fired by allied warplanes. The missiles pierced 9 feet of concrete.
Rescuers clawing through the debris found eight survivors immediately after the bombing, AP correspondent Salah Nasrawi reported from the scene. The rescuers later said they retrieved more than 200 bodies, most of them charred and mutilated beyond recognition, Nasrawi reported.
Iraqi civil defense officials said lists compiled from residents indicated there were more than 500 people inside the structure when the warplanes struck before dawn. A senior civil defense official said scores of people remained buried in the rubble but there was no hope of finding anyone alive.
Residents crowded around the wreckage, looking for relatives and friends. Men beat on their chests and yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is Great," and women cried hysterically, Nasrawi said.
At a Baghdad hospital where the injured were taken, 17-year-old Omar Adnan, badly burned, said he was the only survivor of his family of six.
"I was sleeping and suddenly I felt heat and the blanket was burning," Adnan said. "I turned to try and touch my mother who was next to me but grabbed nothing but a piece of flesh."
Also hit in the raids were telecommunications centers in the al-Jadrieh and al-Jamila districts, and the government's Palace of Conferences, Nasrawi said.
Iraq previously had claimed thousands of civilian casualties in the allied air raids. U.S. officials have said the Iraqi figures were probably inflated.
President Bush, speaking with reporters in Washington on Tuesday, described Iraqi statements on civilian casualties as a "one-sided propaganda mission cranking out myths and falsehoods."
by CNB