Missile Strikes Tel Aviv; 3 Die : 96 Hurt as Scud Devastates Apartment House Area : Gulf War: Sorties by allied warplanes pass the 10,000 mark. Iraqis torch oil facilities in Kuwait and thick smoke hampers aircraft.

A deadly Iraqi Scud missile slipped past U.S.-manned Patriot interceptor batteries Tuesday and thundered into a densely populated neighborhood of Tel Aviv, bringing death to three people and injury to 96 others.

It was the third and gravest attack on Israel since the Persian Gulf War began six days ago. The high number of casualties raised anew the question of whether the Jewish state would retaliate--and risk splintering the U.S.-Arab coalition against Iraq.

The Scud missile crashed into an area of apartment buildings. The three dead were elderly residents who apparently suffered heart attacks. Three of the wounded, including a baby girl, were critically injured while the rest received light to moderate wounds. The warhead carried a conventional explosive, and government spokesmen said there was no trace of poison gas.

A short time earlier, Iraqi forces had fired four Scud missiles into eastern Saudi Arabia. They were aimed at Dhahran, site of a major allied air base. But all were destroyed by Patriot missiles before they reached their targets.

There were these other developments:

* The missile attacks came as allied warplanes streaked over mist and drizzle along the northern Saudi front lines and passed a new mark in air power--10,000 sorties in six days since the war began, surpassing what is often cited as history’s greatest concentration of air power: the 6,151 sorties flown against Germany during six days of 1944.

* In the Persian Gulf itself, U.S. Navy planes sank an Iraqi mine-layer and another ship and chased away two other boats.

* The Iraqis displayed two more men on television whom they identified as American prisoners of war. They were identified by the Iraqis as U.S. Air Force Maj. Jeffrey Scott Tice and Capt. Harry Michael Roberts. The allies expressed concern that they would be sent to join other POWs as human shields at strategic Iraqi facilities.

* The Iraqis torched oil facilities in occupied Kuwait, sending thick, black smoke over the desert and hampering allied aircraft. In all, three facilities were burned, military and oil company executives said. Although there was no immediate drop in oil supplies, world oil prices jumped $2.88 a barrel.

* President Bush’s spokesman said the commander in chief would like to receive better damage assessments from his commanders. A Pentagon spokesman conceded that “we don’t have a fully accurate picture” of U.S. and allied progress. Bush’s spokesman called the President “pensive and fairly preoccupied.”

One of Bush’s biggest concerns was whether Israel would retaliate against the Iraqis for their latest missile attack on Tel Aviv. Israeli Health Minister Ehud Olmert, a confidant of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, seemed to suggest that such retaliation is only a matter of time.

“It is not whether Israel will react or not,” Olmert said, “but when.”

Air raid sirens wailed just after 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Israel time. Moments later, two explosions were heard in the coastal Tel Aviv region. The pair of booms raised speculation that one Scud was shot out of the air while the other crashed into Tel Aviv.

At least two Patriot anti-missile rockets were fired, but it was not immediately clear how many Scuds were heading for Israel and whether the Patriots actually downed any of them. The Scud that hit its target demolished a two-story apartment building and ripped down walls in two others.

It damaged dozens of neighboring two- and three-story apartment houses.

Residents of the neighborhood said they had time to retreat into plastic-sealed rooms and put on gas masks. “We all huddled in a room. Then, boom, and the windows exploded,” said Saguy Goldberg, a 14-year-old who was visiting his grandmother and eight friends and relatives.

Despite the attack, government spokesmen indicated that workers will be asked to go to their jobs today. “Life will go on as normal,” pledged Brig. Gen. Nachman Shai, the chief army spokesman. “We must by all means maintain a regular and normal life.”

Whether or not the Patriots knocked down a Scud on Tuesday, Israeli officials warned that they are not a cure-all for missile attacks.

“We appreciate the excellent work of the Patriot crews,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “But that only gives part of the answer.” Danny Naveh, a spokesman for Defense Minister Moshe Arens, said, “The Patriot improves our defense.

“But it is not the full answer to removing the threat.”

American defense officials appeared to lay some of the blame for the success of the Scud attack on Israel.

At Israel’s insistence, said defense sources who asked to remain anonymous, American soldiers and equipment making up the two Patriot battalions sent to Israel last weekend were put under the command of the Israel Defense Forces.

Thus, these sources said, Israeli officers would have had a key role in issuing the commands that dictated whether and how American Patriot operators responded to warnings about an incoming Scud.

While Pentagon officials conceded that the Patriot is not a foolproof interceptor, they suggested that inexperience in command could contribute to a miss.

Outbursts of public anger could pressure the Shamir government to order Israel’s air force into action. Shamir was scheduled to meet with his Cabinet and top military officers this morning.

Ron Ben-Yishai, a knowledgeable Israeli defense correspondent, said Israel would retaliate only if it could be more efficient in knocking out Scud launchers than the Americans and their allies have been. In any event, he predicted, Israel would cooperate with the U.S. command in Saudi Arabia to coordinate any kind of attack.

Iraq’s mobile Scud launchers have proved an elusive target for allied jet bombers flying out of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Iraq has hidden them underground, rolling them out only for surprise use.

In its attacks on Tel Aviv last Friday and Saturday, Iraq launched 11 missiles. Their explosions injured 28 people, all slightly, and left more than 700 homeless. Doctors said that most of those injured in the new attack will be released from hospitals by this morning.

The United States has pressed Israel to refrain from retaliation so as not to complicate Washington’s job of holding together a fragile anti-Iraq coalition of Arab states that are also hostile to Israel. Arens, the Israeli defense minister, has dismissed all suggestions that Israel hold off retaliating indefinitely.

Arens declared: “Our actions that would be taken in the defense of Israel are really not contingent on receiving permission from anybody.”

Visiting Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger has praised Israel’s restraint. During meetings Tuesday, before the latest attack, he signed legal agreements with Israel formalizing the stationing of U.S. troops in Israel. The soldiers are manning the Patriot launchers.

Eagleburger also heard a request for $13 billion in aid from Israeli Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai, who said Israel will suffer $3 billion in economic losses if the war lasts a month. He said the Israelis need compensation.

Added government spokesman Yossi Olmert: “If God forbid, the war drags on, we’ll need more.”

The other $10 billion is a longstanding request by Israel for money to build housing for new Soviet immigrants. Cash-strapped Washington rejected the request last year, at a time when relations between Washington and Jerusalem were strained because of Israel’s suppression of Palestinians.

Israel hopes, however, that its cooperation with the United States against Iraq has improved relations. “It’s a whole new atmosphere,” Olmert, the health minister, said. “In times of trouble, we find out what unites us.”

The POWs

In Washington, Tice and Roberts, the two men the Iraqis identified as new American POWs, were described by the Pentagon as missing in action. Interviews with the two men were played on Iraqi TV and radio.

It prompted unusual candor from Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly, operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. Despite Pentagon reluctance to talk about specific military targets in Iraq, Kelly named one outright: Iraq Television.

He said bombing the TV facilities has “been significantly successful.”

“I don’t think there’s many people in Baghdad watching” the POW displays, Kelly said.

Propaganda use of captured servicemen violates the Geneva Convention on treatment of war prisoners. The Bush Administration has denounced such actions as “war crimes” and vowed to hold the Iraqi leadership responsible.

The United States filed complaints with the U.N. Security Council.

The White House said it is “far too early” to talk about compiling a list of war crime charges against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. But a senior State Department official who asked to remain anonymous told the Reuters news agency that the United States is examining a number of ideas for eventually bringing Iraqi leaders to trial for war crimes.

The official said a 15-page discussion document had been circulated within the government. Options, the official said, included creating a Nuremberg-style tribunal.

The affect on allied airmen of the televised displays of POWs seemed mixed. Certainly, it gave them grim warning of what might happen if they are shot down. But at the same time, the displays seemed to anger them.

Some vowed to redouble their efforts against the Iraqis.

Meanwhile, allied military officials counted another loss--a British Tornado shot down early in the day. It raised to 15 the number of allied planes lost in combat--nine of them American. The allied command said 17 Iraqi planes have been destroyed in dogfights.

In all, the Pentagon lists 13 American pilots and crew members as missing in action.

Iraq, for its part, said allied warplanes attacked Baghdad 20 times late Monday and early Tuesday and struck residential areas.

Iraq Radio also asserted that allied bombers attacked two major Islamic religious sites--the towns of Karbala and Najaf. The Iraqis vowed that “holy anger” would bring “suicide operations” by Muslims who “will seek retribution.”

At allied headquarters in Saudi Arabia, military officials said they were limiting attacks to strategic targets, although some did not discount collateral damage. They said, however, that they are specifically avoiding holy places.

Oil Fields

Smoke from the Kuwaiti oil facilities billowed into the sky early in the day, blinding some allied fliers.

“It’s going to impact on our operations somewhat,” U.S. Army Lt. Col. Greg Pepin told reporters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In addition to hampering aircraft, other military sources said, the smoke and intense heat from the fires could hamstring “smart” weapons, including missiles and bombs that are guided by television cameras and infrared images.

Flying already was difficult enough. Low cloud cover has limited visibility for pilots for the past three days.

One of the burning oil fields is at Wafra, known for its bobbing “donkey pump” oil rigs, about 50 miles west-northwest of the Saudi border town of Khafji. The field straddles the Saudi-Kuwaiti border and is near a face-off point between Iraqi and allied forces. Iraqis shelled oil facilities at Khafji last Thursday.

Since then, the town has been evacuated.

The U.S. military command released aerial photographs of the field at Wafra and said they showed that Iraq had blown up parts of it.

“Earlier today, (it) was still on fire,” Col. Pepin said.

Oil company executives in Bahrain said fires were raging at two other oil installations. The executives said these installations were at Mina Abdullah, a huge petrochemical complex about 30 miles north of the Kuwait-Saudi border, and at Shuaiba, a huge refinery about 5 miles farther north.

The refinery at Mina Abdullah was described as one of the most advanced in the world.

Tanks at the two refineries held petroleum products such as gasoline and heating oil.

Before the war, the Wafra field was managed by Texaco. A spokesman said it produced 135,000 barrels of oil a day. The spokesman, David Dixon, called this an “insignificant amount of worldwide Texaco operations.”

The explosions and fires are not expected to cause a drop in world oil supplies. Neither Kuwait nor Iraq, which occupies it, has exported oil since the U.N. trade embargo began last year.

Nonetheless, the fires sparked a rise in oil prices and fueled fears that the war could touch off an environmental disaster in the Persian Gulf.

In New York, light sweet crude oil futures jumped $2.88 a barrel to $24.18.

Despite the reports from oil executives and the aerial photos released by the allied command, which it said were evidence that Iraq had blown up parts of Wafra, the White House said it could confirm only one blaze and said it was set by Iraqis in a ditch full of petroleum somewhere in Kuwait.

White House officials did not rule out the possibility of other fires. But Doug Davidson, assistant White House press secretary, said: “All we can confirm is the ditch.”

Although it was unrelated to the oil field fires, Western diplomats said that Saudi Arabia had depleted its supply of jet fuel and had purchased 8 million barrels on the open market to keep the allied air force flying.

Despite Saudi Arabia’s large supply of oil, these sources said, the Saudis are not able to keep up with the coalition’s huge appetite for fuel.

Some allied spokesmen said the fires might be a prelude to an Iraqi withdrawal.

“Why else would they do it?” said Abdalla Sharhan, a spokesman for the Kuwaiti Embassy in Bahrain.

But Commodore Ken Summers, the commander of Canadian forces, said Iraq might be simply trying to accomplish what it did: create a smoke screen to protect its forces against allied air attack.

Still others said Iraq blew up the oil installations--particularly Wafra--because they are close to the front and the Iraqis are anticipating a ground assault.

Ali Juhail, an executive with Kuwait Oil Co., now living in exile in Bahrain, said Iraq might have had in mind showing the world that it would not hesitate to ignite oil facilities at Magwa and Burgan, two of the biggest fields in the world.

The President

There was a sense in Washington that it did not have what Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams called “a fully accurate picture” of allied progress in the war.

“President Bush has asked for the same kind of damage reports that you have, and it’s just not there,” presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters. Fitzwater said allied coordination and high-tech weaponry “have gone very well.” But he added: “We’d like to have a better damage assessment. . . .

“That is the missing element.”

Despite Bush’s access to sensitive intelligence information, Fitzwater said, the President does not know much more about the effect of the allied bombing campaign than the average American. “He thinks people are getting as full a picture as we have,” Fitzwater said. “He just wishes we had a better one. . . .

“Damage is obviously being inflicted, I think, because of the number of bombs that are being dropped and so forth,” Fitzwater said. “You get pictures during the bombing runs that show when the bombs are being dropped, but you don’t always get good reports on the damage that was done afterwards.”

At the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Kelly looked startled when a reporter asked him about the apparent frustration at the White House over lack of information.

“I did not know the President was frustrated,” Kelly said. Then he added: “I can assure you we’re working hard.”

But Williams, the Pentagon spokesman, conceded that there is an information gap.

“We don’t have a fully accurate picture” about damage, Williams said in an interview on the NBC-TV “Today” show.

Appearing on the same show, Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said: “We haven’t got the specifics, and that’s causing heartburn in Congress, as well as it has in the press corps.”

Pentagon briefers reportedly have told Congress that allied bombing raids are blasting huge craters into Iraqi airfields and interrupting command and control systems. But damage, they said, is being repaired quickly.

“The early euphoria has changed into an unease that this may take longer than we thought,” said Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.). But Rep. Jim Slattery (D-Kan.) counseled the public to have patience.

“Let the military professionals conduct this,” Slattery said, “in a way that will hold casualties to a minimum on both sides.”

The President, however, appeared to be among those who are most pensive about results.

Fitzwater described him as “pensive and fairly preoccupied.”

“This is on his mind a good deal of the time,” the presidential spokesman reported. How much of the time?

About 70% to 80%, Fitzwater said.

Times staff writers J. Michael Kennedy and Kim Murphy, in Riyadh and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, respectively; Charles Wallace in Manama, Bahrain, and Melissa Healy and David Lauter, in Washington, contributed to this report.