Iraq Claims POW Killed : ‘Human Shield’ a Victim of Allied Bombing, It Says

Iraq said today that a captured allied pilot--one of those used as a “human shield”--was killed by an allied bombing raid on an industrial target in Baghdad.

It said Washington was to blame for the death of the POW, whose name and nationality were withheld, because U.S. forces attacked civilians, and urged families of captured airmen to denounce the “crimes” of President Bush.

Also today, members of the 1st Marine Division crept within 1,000 yards of the Saudi-Kuwait border and unleashed more than 300 rounds of artillery, mortar and shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles on Iraqi bunkers and observation posts in Kuwait. There was no return fire. Marine officers said they believed the bunkers and observation posts were destroyed.

Iraq announced a week ago that it was keeping downed airmen at industrial and scientific sites to deter attacks on targets it says should be off limits to allied air raids.

The United States and its allies called the move a war crime and a violation of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of captives.

The allies also said the human shield tactic would not stop attacks on Iraq. A U.S. military spokesman in Saudi Arabia said today he had no comment on the report of a death.

The State Department, reacting to the report and earlier ones saying POWs have been injured by allied air raids, today summoned Khalid J. Shewayish, the senior Iraqi diplomat in Washington, “to raise concern” about the pilots.

Today’s report, monitored in Cyprus, said the allied POW was killed in one of 65 air raids on Iraq Monday night and this morning.

“One of the raids hit one of the departments of the Ministry of Industry, killing one of the captured foreign pilots, who had been evacuated to that department,” said a military statement carried by the Iraqi News Agency.

The British Foreign Office called in the Iraqi ambassador to Britain to explain Iraq’s claims that captured allied airmen have been injured. Douglas Hogg of the Foreign Office said the ambassador was “singularly ignorant” about the reports.

The allies say that 15 American airmen, eight Britons, two Italians, a Saudi and a Kuwaiti are missing. Nine were shown as captives on Baghdad television.

The United States, meanwhile, vowed to shoot down any Iraqi plane that tried to rejoin the war after taking refuge in Iran. Up to 100 Iraqi planes reportedly have fled to Iran in a development that puzzles U.S. officials.

IRNA, the official news agency of Iraq’s eastern neighbor Iran, reported today that allied air raids overnight set ablaze a petrochemical plant in the southern Iraqi port of Basra.

Smoke from the fire in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, blanketed Khorramshahr, about 25 miles east across the border.

Relaying reports it said came from Kurds in northern Iraq, Iran said the allies also inflicted heavy damage on the airport and radio and television station in the oil city of Kirkuk, 140 miles north of Baghdad.

Also, Army Brig. Gen. Pat Stevens IV, at a briefing in Riyadh today, said that a giant oil slick appears to be breaking up in the Persian Gulf. He said the flow of oil into the slick has stopped.

Stevens said the allies flew 2,600 sorties today, boosting the total number since the war began to about 26,600.