New Mother Among 130 Americans Flown to Safety

An Iraqi Airways charter flight arrived here late Saturday carrying 130 Americans from Kuwait, including a woman who gave birth to twins while fighting raged around her in the conquered nation.

“I could hear the bombs while I was in labor,” said Claudia Ledesma of San Diego, who delivered her babies on Aug. 26 while some resistance activity continued against the Iraqis 22 days after they invaded Kuwait.

Ledesma and her fellow passengers, women and children who had been allowed to leave Kuwait by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, arrived thirsty, hungry and exhausted.

The U.S. evacuation flight was the second from Kuwait via Baghdad in two days. A U.S. Embassy spokesman, Claude Young, said those aboard the flight and a group of American evacuees who arrived in Amman on Friday would board a U.S. military plane sent from the Persian Gulf.

The American plane was scheduled to leave Amman with the evacuees early today for an air base in Charleston, S.C., after a refueling stop in Frankfurt, West Germany, Young added.

Meanwhile, Iraq announced that no further charter flights would be routed through Amman because Jordan had complained of airport crowding. But the statement was contradicted by a spokesman for Amman’s airport, who denied that crowding was a problem.

An Iraqi spokesman, who acknowledged that the short-haul charters to Amman were relatively unprofitable for Iraqi Airways, said, “We are ready to take (the chartered planes) to any other capital or city, even to the farthest point.”

A State Department spokesman said the United States was considering chartering a flight from Baghdad to London today to carry the next group of released Americans out of the Middle East. But he said no decision had been made.

Iraq’s order apparently did not affect the U.S.-chartered flight that arrived in Amman on Saturday carrying about 130 Americans.

The flight had been held up in Baghdad for several hours, and there was no immediate explanation for the delay.

Most of the American women on the plane were married to Kuwaitis or other Arabs, U.S. diplomatic sources said.

They said 171 American women and children who arrived in Jordan on Friday on the first U.S. flight from occupied Kuwait since Iraq invaded on Aug. 2 would be flown home with the new evacuees.

Eleven Americans, nine Britons, six Swiss, several Japanese, two Frenchmen, an Irishman and a Finn arrived Saturday on two regular Iraqi flights from Baghdad. Other passengers included Indians, Iraqis and Jordanians. Most of the Westerners were journalists.

Baghdad has barred most Western men from leaving Iraq and Kuwait, where many are hiding. Others are held as human shields against any attack by multinational forces in the gulf and Saudi Arabia.

Also Saturday, two more embassies in Kuwait bowed to the pressure brought to bear by the Iraqi occupiers. Sweden and Norway evacuated their diplomatic staffs but insisted their missions technically remained open.

The Iraqis, who ordered embassies in the conquered emirate to close two weeks ago, have been backing up that demand with a cutoff of food, water, power and telephone service to the missions.

About 20 embassies, including the U.S. mission, remain open with skeleton staffs to symbolize their refusal to accept Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait, and to try to provide some protection for their citizens trapped by the invasion.

Times staff writer Alan Miller, in Washington, contributed to this story.