Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 14, 1991 TAG: 9102140267
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Medium
Iraqi officials said the bombers had struck an underground air-raid shelter in a residential section of the capital and killed at least 500 people. If verified, that would be the highest civilian toll from a single strike since the Persian Gulf exploded in war four weeks ago.
Officials in Saudi Arabia and Washington expressed regret for the civilian casualties, but implied that President Saddam Hussein had deliberately sacrificed his people for propaganda purposes.
The 40-foot-deep structure in al-Amerieh, a middle-class neighborhood, was destroyed about 4:30 a.m. by two laser-guided bombs, one of which cleared a path for the other.
Iraqi officials said the shelter had been used each night by neighborhood residents, mainly women and children, to seek safety from the incessant allied air raids. They said the facility played no military role.
Iraq's health minister, Abdel-Salam Mohammed Saeed, described the precision bombing as "a well-planned crime."
Television pictures from the smoking rubble clearly stunned and angered some allied military leaders, who have emphasized that they were trying to limit civilian deaths.
By nightfall, 14 hours after the pre-dawn attack, crews were still pulling charred bodies, some of them children, from the rubble, an Associated Press correspondent reported from Baghdad. Distraught relatives crowded the smoke-filled streets.
The AP correspondent, Dilip Ganguly, inspected the ruins with other journalists and said he saw no obvious sign that it had a military use.
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said in Washington that "we sincerely regret any damage or any deaths caused to the civilian population."
But while officials said the allies will not strike targets known to be occupied by civilians, Cheney said they would hit military targets even if Saddam mixes them into civilian areas.
White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the destroyed structure was "a command-and-control center that fed instructions directly to the Iraqi war machine."
Military officers in Saudi Arabia said they had irrefutable photo and signal intelligence to back up allied claims that the facility was just that, and therefore a prime military target.
Capt. David Herrington, the deputy director of intelligence for the U.S. Joint Staff, said the building was camouflaged and was specially protected to shield communications from disruption by even a nuclear blast.
But the officers acknowledged they lacked any human intelligence - a spy on the ground - that might have warned them that civilians were using the bunker.
The attack was certain to increase concern, especially in the Soviet Union and Arab nations, that the allies were exceeding the United Nations mandate to force Iraq out of Kuwait.
"I think the coalition governments will be uncomfortable," said Robert Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "There is pressure among the Arab people because Arabs are being killed by American bombs."
While Neumann said the civilian losses could be "exploited" by Saddam, he said they would not be "decisive" in threatening the stability of the coalition. "It is an uncomfortable point, and there will be many more," he said.
Allied military officials said the structure had been converted from an air raid shelter to military use in 1985, in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war.
by CNB