Iraqi Armor Rolls South : Allied Jets Rain Bombs on Convoys

Allied warplanes today pounded a 10-mile-long Iraqi armored convoy massing in southern Kuwait, and new ground fighting broke out between U.S. Marines and Iraqi troops along the Saudi-Kuwaiti border.

Some Iraqi snipers held out in the Saudi border town of Khafji, which was retaken by allied troops Thursday.

Hundreds of Iraqi tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks were on the move in an apparent effort to resupply troops in occupied Kuwait, according to press pool reports from allied positions near the Saudi-Kuwaiti border.

“Roughly 800 to 1,000 vehicles are moving now in columns, in small groups, in convoys,” said British Lt. Col. Dick White, the commander of a squadron of Harrier attack jets.

Allied warplanes, including U.S. B-52 bombers, pounded the Iraqi armored column, destroying more than 100 tanks, the pool reports said.

“There is a significant enemy force that is attempting to mass itself north of the (Saudi-Kuwaiti) border,” a Pentagon official said. “We are, and have been, engaging them with air strikes with some considerable magnitude.

But Brig. Gen. Pat Stevens IV of the U.S. Central Command in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, emphasized that the massing of the Iraqi armored force does not indicate that “there is any major action about to happen.”

Stevens confirmed that a U.S. AC-130 gunship crashed behind enemy lines Thursday morning and that all 14 crew members were missing in action.

There was renewed fighting today in the same area where 11 Marines were killed. An unspecified number of Iraqi tanks crossed from Kuwait near the Saudi village of Umm Hujul late Thursday and were met by artillery fire from the U.S. 1st Marine Division, a press pool report from the region said.

Referring to that engagement, Stevens said Iraqi tanks fired on a U.S. observation post near the Saudi-Kuwaiti border. U.S. artillery returned fire, and five enemy tanks fled, he said. There was no report of allied casualties.

Marine artillery and warplanes continued to pound suspected Iraqi armor positions in the area early today, the pool report said.

Pool reports from northeastern Saudi Arabia said Iraqi snipers were holding out in Khafji, which was retaken Thursday by Saudi and Qatari troops after two days of the heaviest ground fighting of the war. Stevens said a “battalion-size” Iraqi force had been holding the town.

A Pentagon official had no specific information on the snipers, saying the military was focusing its attention on the enemy troops massing in Kuwait.

Iraqi losses in the fighting earlier this week included well over 300 troops killed and a “large number” of injured, Royal Air Force Group Capt. Niall Irving, a British military spokesman, said at a news briefing today in Riyadh. But another British military spokesman later said that figure was mistaken, and put the Iraqi loss at 30.

Stevens said a total of more than 500 enemy prisoners had been taken.

Two missing U.S. Army soldiers, including the first woman MIA, were identified today as Specialist Melissas A. Nealy, 20, and Specialist David Lockett, 23.