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

DATE: TUESDAY, February 26, 1991                   TAG: 9102260260
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: EASTERN SAUDI ARABIA                                LENGTH: Medium

ADVANCING MARINES FIND MORE AND MORE PRISONERS

As they snaked through the fearsome Iraqi mine fields on Monday - both poking the sands in primitive fashion with wooden sticks and sweeping the area with high-tech detection devices in search of explosives - U.S. Marines participating in the allied assault to free Kuwait continued to encounter another troubling obstacle.

At each bend in their path, the Marines encountered more and more enemy prisoners.

There were so many captives that correspondents traveling with the U.S. troops reported seeing hundreds of Iraqi prisoners. Some were lying on the ground, their hands tied with plastic handcuffs; others moved single-file to a holding area in a line that stretched for a quarter of a mile.

But "while some [Iraqi] units didn't have much resolve," said Lt. Col. Bill Clark, there were several that did. "There were several that did what they thought was right" and put up some initial resistance, he said.

"Most of them," however, he added, "were just happy to see us. The majority had leaflets [from the allies on how to surrender], which they were waving in the air . . . . Once they got their nose bloodied, they were not willing to continue the fight."

As American troops pushed deeper into Kuwait on Monday, they took so many thousands more Iraqi prisoners - including an enemy general - that Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer, the commander of U.S. Marine forces in the gulf, felt he had reason for optimism.

He predicted that the ground war would be over "in a matter of days, not weeks."

As for the enemy captives, "You do the best you can," he said on a wind-swept desert plain behind the front lines. "The prisoners have to be taken care of, but they are a drain on your resources. I suspect they got a little bit in the way last night."

Despite the speed of the allies' advance, the troops have been slowed as they navigate through wide mine fields, which without warning can turn the desert into killing zones.

The Marines probe the sand with 12-inch wooden sticks. They swing magnetic mine detectors in an arc ahead of them before proceeding gingerly. When mines are found, the Leathernecks clear the sand around them, them detonate them with explosive charges.

Military police then mark the mine-laden zones with red flags and barbed wire. They warn passing convoys not to veer out of the tracks of the vehicle ahead.

Beyond the Marine advance, flames shot 100 feet into the night from wellheads in Kuwait set ablaze by Iraqi troops. The ground ahead shook as hundreds of war planes, including B-52 bombers, pounded Iraqi positions.

In the war's early hours, the Marines encountered heavy artillery as they punched their way through obstacle belts along the central border region of Kuwait. Six paths were opened through barriers laced with mines, barbed wire and trenches. Each was outlined in colored engineer's tape, and hundreds of tanks and troops then poured through the corridors.

by CNB