2 GIs Wounded in Skirmish With Iraqis : Military: Six enemy soldiers are captured in the encounter. Clearing skies ease way for allied air strikes.

Two American soldiers were slightly wounded and six Iraqi soldiers were taken prisoner in one of the few small-arms skirmishes of the week-old Gulf War, American officials reported Wednesday.

A U.S. military spokesman said the skirmish took place late Tuesday night on the Saudi side of the Kuwaiti border and that, as has been the case for the last several days, it occurred as there was intermittent artillery fire on the front lines.

Air Force Lt. Col. Mike Scott said both wounded soldiers were treated and returned to duty.

Meanwhile, skies cleared over Iraq and Kuwait for the first time since Sunday, easing the way for allied jets to pound Iraqi positions. The total of sorties, which has become a benchmark for the U.S. military, now stands at more than 12,000.

Scott said that no airplanes were lost in combat in the last 24 hours but that a Marine Harrier jet and an Army Cobra helicopter crashed in noncombat accidents. The Harrier pilot was killed, while there were no injuries in the chopper crash. The two crashes bring to 14 the number of American aircraft lost since fighting began, nine of them in combat.

Scott said that Operation Desert Storm “remains on track,” with U.S. pilots flying 85% of all missions.

The Americans also released photos of oil fields afire in Kuwait, which were burning out of control for the second day in a row after being set ablaze by Iraqi troops. The photos were intended partly to show that there were no bomb craters that would have indicated mistaken hits by the allies and partly to show that the smoke from the fires was not completely engulfing the area.

American officials had said Tuesday that the fires, coupled with the cloud cover, would impair some allied air operations. Scott said Wednesday that “the effect on the overall plan has been minimal.”

Iraq continued to fire Scud missiles into Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. The U.S. military command reported Scud attacks on Riyadh, Dhahran and a site “in north-central Saudi Arabia,” but all of the the missiles apparently were intercepted by Patriots.

Meanwhile, Iraq announced that it was suspending the sale of gasoline and heating oil. British Maj. Gen. Alex Harley, quoted by the Associated Press, said that the allied bombings had reduced Iraq’s oil-refining capacity by half.

The official Iranian news agency said Wednesday that allied airplanes were hammering the southern Iraqi port of Basra, which is Iraq’s military headquarters for the Kuwaiti theater. The news agency said that the sound of the bombings could be heard 25 miles away.

Baghdad Radio accused the leaders of the United States, France and Britain of deliberately ordering attacks on civilian targets, saying the bombings had killed a number of innocent people throughout the country.

“It is very clear that the criminal attacks waged by the U.S. aggressors and their British, French, Zionist and other allies are criminal and vengeful acts,” the radio said.

U.S. officials confirmed Wednesday that the Iraqis were attempting to repave some airfields cratered by allied bombing so that planes hidden there could take off. However, Scott, the military spokesman, said the allies were doing their best to stop the repairs.

“We are making great strides to see that their air operations are eliminated,” he said. “Taking out airstrips is very, very difficult. We are making them repatch and repatch and repatch.”