CRISIS IN THE PERSIAN GULF : More Refugees Surge Into Jordan : Exodus: Thousands cross over from Iraq and Kuwait. A few Americans are reported among the latest to get out.

About 7,000 exhausted, terrified foreigners, nearly all of them workers from Third World nations, surged across the Iraqi frontier into Jordan on Thursday as the influx of refugees from Iraq and Kuwait skyrocketed, Jordanian officials said.

In the past two days, about 9,000 foreigners have driven for hours across the desert or fled in other ways to Jordan, the officials said.

More than a dozen nationalities, including thousands of Egyptians and hundreds of Indian citizens, were represented among the refugees. Three Americans, three Britons and a Frenchwoman--the first Westerners allowed out by Iraq since last weekend--also were reported to have crossed the border.

Another 4,000 people were reported waiting on the Iraqi side, ready to make their way to freedom, according to reports from their fellow travelers.

Besides highlighting the uncertainty sweeping the expatriate communities in Iraq and Kuwait, the refugees’ flight of fear underlines the magnetic power that oil wealth in the Persian Gulf has traditionally held for workers from the Third World.

Before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, about 1.2 million of the sheikdom’s population of 2 million were foreign nationals, among them a large contingent of Palestinians in important administrative posts.

In Iraq, Egyptian workers alone number at least 700,000. Other nationalities working in the two countries include Filipinos, Indians, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Saudi Arabians, Thais, Yugoslavs and Chileans.

Those fleeing the turmoil have presented their governments with a logistical nightmare. The Egyptian Embassy in Jordan, for example, is providing Egyptians with money for transport out of Aqaba, Jordan’s only port, to the Sinai Peninsula, where the refugees board buses for Cairo. The Indian government, meanwhile, has been arranging special flights home for its citizens.

“Our main concern is for the women and children,” a visiting Indian official, Aviation Minister Muaraf Kahan, said.

Many of the refugees have described Kuwait as a country now ruled by terror and general lawlessness. Ghalel Mohammed Sawaf, a former security guard at the airport in Kuwait who escaped Thursday, said bands of soldiers roamed house to house after the invasion helping themselves to consumer goods. Women also were raped and otherwise abused by soldiers, he charged.

“There’s no safety, no food, gasoline is running short. Any soldier can enter your flat and take your money. And if you complain, well, they kick you out into the street,” said Sawaf, who said he was bruised by a rifle butt when he resisted a soldier who stole his television.

Besides the near-anarchy, Sawaf said, he also was prompted to leave because of the conflicting authority in his job at the Kuwaiti airport, with Kuwaitis and Iraqis quarreling over who should operate what.

However, getting out presented a problem: Sawaf was paid in Kuwaiti currency which, after being merged into Iraqi currency, has fallen in value by 90%. He decided to leave most of his savings in Kuwait in hopes that the situation will be reversed and took only enough for gasoline. He also left hidden $1,000 in U.S. dollars.

The only valuable he tried to take with him was a videotape recorder he had hidden in his house. But that was confiscated by Iraqi customs officials as he left the country.

“They leave us with nothing,” Sawaf said, displaying the empty trunk of his white Peugeot.

Similarly, officials at the Egyptian Embassy in Amman said many Egyptians were complaining that electrical appliances are being confiscated by Iraqi officials.

For Egyptians, there is also a problem of criticism by Iraq of Egypt’s stand in the gulf crisis. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has condemned the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and sent Egyptian troops to help defend Saudi Arabia.

“The (Iraqi) soldiers would curse Mubarak and also King Fahd,” Sawaf recalled, noting that Fahd, the Saudi monarch, also was the butt of many insults.

Egyptian officials said their citizens have not been physically manhandled but that the tone toward them has changed after Egypt’s decision to ally itself with the United States.

The Jordanian Interior Ministry, meanwhile, took the unusual step of announcing that Jordanian expatriates have not “reported any complaints” about their treatment in Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion. About 400,000 Jordanians, most of them of Palestinian origin, live in Kuwait and Iraq.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Amman identified one of the three Americans who crossed the border Thursday as Bassem Hajbeh.