U.S. Briefly Halts Gulf Training Flights to Review Safety : Military: The move follows fatal accidents. Iraqi treatment of evacuees is protested.

After a rash of fatal aircraft accidents here, the Air Force ordered a 12-hour suspension of training flights in the Persian Gulf region to review safety procedures, military officials announced Thursday.

The half-day “safety stand-down” on Wednesday barred all flights except those vital to military operations. The extraordinary step was imposed by the Air Force theater commander, Lt. Gen. Charles A. Horner, to ensure that the service is doing “all that is possible to prevent accidents which could be caused by human error.”

Meanwhile, the State Department lodged a vigorous protest of Iraqi interrogation and harassment of a planeload of American and other evacuees from Kuwait. After “a 10-hour ordeal,” at least 12 people were barred from boarding the plane.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said Iraq’s “sinister manipulation of innocent lives . . . again demonstrates its willingness to disregard every recognized standard of humanitarian conduct.”

Tutwiler said that about 321 people, including 270 Americans and their family members, eventually were allowed to leave aboard a chartered Iraqi Airways jet that arrived in London Thursday. The Americans are expected to continue to the United States today.

The halt to Air Force flight operations in Saudi Arabia was ordered immediately after the second fatal Air Force crash of the week. Four planes now have been destroyed and six servicemen are dead in Air Force operations in Saudi Arabia since the U.S. deployment to the Middle East began.

The Air Force has roughly 700 aircraft in the region, including 420 combat planes. While critical missions continued during the stand-down, most aircraft in the region were grounded, officials said.

Although the Air Force previously has halted flights elsewhere because of safety concerns, the Saudi Arabian suspension was startling because it comes during preparations for possible combat.

In all, 28 servicemen have died in 20 aviation accidents related to the Saudi operation. Three other servicemen have been killed in non-flying mishaps.

“There’s no such thing as an acceptable level of accidents,” Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said Thursday. But he said that defense officials believe that the crashes were “an unrelated string of accidents.”

The Army has revised its helicopter training rules as a result of a number of serious accidents, but the Navy and Marine Corps have taken no extraordinary steps to increase safety, officials said. Two Marine helicopters disappeared Monday, and the eight men aboard are presumed dead.

Military officials in Saudi Arabia said the Air Force was particularly troubled because the crashes appeared to have nothing in common, raising concerns that the accidents could be caused by an unrecognized flaw or hazard peculiar to desert operations.

Before this week, Air Force accidents had claimed an F-16 fighter in a Sept. 3 accident in which the crew members ejected safely, and an F-15E fighter on Sept. 30 in which both crew members were killed. Two crashes this week claimed an Alabama Air National Guard RF-4C Phantom and its two crewmen Monday, and an F-111F fighter-bomber and both crew members Wednesday.

A C-5 cargo plane on a supply mission to Saudi Arabia crashed in Germany last month, killing all 13 crew members.

In announcing the stand-down, Horner, the Air Force theater commander, noted that the military has convened a board to examine each accident and is taking steps to find “a solution” to the series of crashes.

But in a statement released Thursday night, he noted: “At this time, there is no common fault we can identify.”

Regarding the journey of the American evacuees from Kuwait and Iraq, Tutwiler said that some passengers panicked and abandoned plans to leave.

It was the last scheduled evacuation flight from the troubled countries. Since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait Aug. 2, about 2,300 American citizens and their family members have been allowed to leave. Only about 750 Americans remain in Kuwait and Iraq.

Because Iraqi officials refused to permit the use of the Kuwait airport, evacuees were taken by bus to the airport in the southern Iraqi town of Basra. From there they were flown to Baghdad and then on to London.

“Instead of taking the direct route to Basra, the 10 buses were redirected by the Iraqis to the Regency Hotel in Kuwait city,” Tutwiler said.

At the hotel, she said, passengers were interrogated by Iraqi forces for three hours before being allowed to reboard the buses. At the Kuwait-Iraq border, they were questioned for another three hours.

Staff writers John M. Broder and Norman Kempster, in Washington, contributed to this story.