‘Hit Squads’ Target Iraqis : Deserters Face Death, POWs Say

Iraq has organized “execution battalions” to punish soldiers attempting to desert on the battlefield, the commander of Saudi and other Arab forces in the Persian Gulf War said today.

Prince Khalid bin Sultan said information about the death units came from prisoners of war and indicated the units probably have killed Iraqi soldiers.

He quoted POWs as saying there also were special agents and informers in the Iraqi ranks to report on soldiers who might be planning to abandon their posts, and it was impossible for would-be deserters to know whom they can trust.

He told a military briefing in Riyadh that allied forces have taken 936 Iraqi prisoners since the war began and that 418 Iraqi troops had surrendered in the 5 1/2 months before the war.

Meanwhile today, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Saudi Arabia to assess the state of war with Iraq and to confer with their field commanders on the critical question of whether to launch a potentially hazardous ground war.

Cheney, addressing a crowd of troops in Saudi Arabia, described the three-week, round-the-clock bombing of Iraqi positions as “the most successful air campaign in the history of the world.”

At the same time, Marine Maj. Gen. Robert B. Johnston, the Operation Desert Storm chief of staff, said today that the relentless bombing runs had destroyed an estimated 600 Iraqi tanks.

Johnston also said that the number of Iraqi warplanes flown to Iran had increased to 147, or roughly 20% of the entire Iraqi air force. Another 135 planes have been destroyed either on the ground or in dogfights.

A Navy commander has expressed deep concern that the planes in Iran will be used to launch a major air assault against ships in the Gulf. But Johnston said plans are in place to deal with the planes if they take to the air and head toward allied targets.

“From Day One we’ve been prepared to defend our forces 360 degrees,” Johnston said. “You don’t just go airborne with 130 aircraft and attack. We have ways of dealing with them.”

Johnston said that he was satisfied, for now at least, with the promise by Iran that the planes will be grounded until the end of the war.

“We do know there are 147 planes out of the war now,” he said.

Besides the planes and the tanks out of action, a senior military official said today that allied jets had knocked out an estimated 400 artillery pieces from the Kuwait Theater of Operations. However, an estimated 2,800 artillery pieces remain to be dealt with in the coming days, he said.

The Iraqi capital of Baghdad experienced far fewer bombing and missile strikes late Thursday and early today than it did the previous night. But a major communications center was destroyed, and the al-Jomhouriya bridge over the Tigris River, left partly intact after two earlier strikes, was demolished, according to a reporter. The newspaper of Iraq’s ruling Baath party, al-Thawra, reported that there had been a sharp rise in the number of miscarriages and premature births in Baghdad since the air raids started on Jan. 17.