The Day in the Gulf

* BATTLESHIP BOMBARDMENT: The United States swung the battleship Missouri into action, bombarding the Kuwaiti coast with its 16-inch guns. It was the first time the guns were used in combat since the Korean War. They targeted prefabricated concrete bunkers that the Iraqis were moving into place in Kuwait.

* BORDER EXCHANGES: U.S. and Iraqi forces traded fire across the desert frontier in northern Saudi Arabia. U.S. Marines lobbed artillery shells at Iraqi targets in Kuwait and used air power to blast an Iraqi rocket battery after it opened fire on allied positions, Marine officials said.

* HIDING OUT: Relentless attacks by U.S. and allied warplanes have forced Iraqi soldiers to move in smaller convoys and top officers to seek protection in schools and mosques, depending on allied promises to spare those facilities, U.S. military officials in Saudi Arabia said.

* BAGHDAD HIT: Allied bombs pounded Baghdad, and official newspapers promised that the country would retaliate with a ferocious hit-and-run ground war that would end in an Iraqi victory.

* OFFER FROM IRAN: President Hashemi Rafsanjani of neutral Iran offered to meet Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for talks on ending the Gulf War. He said he is also willing to resume official contacts with the United States to that end. Washington reacted coolly to the proposal.

* FIGHTING THE SPILL: Two jumbo jets loaded with oil-spill fighting equipment were en route to the Persian Gulf to help contain a widening slick blamed on Iraq. But a Saudi Aramco executive said: “Nobody has ever seen a spill this size. The whole world hasn’t got enough equipment to deal with it.” Favorable winds have held the southernmost part of the slick away from key industrial facilities.