The Day in the Gulf

* IRAQI ARMOR REDUCED: About 20% of Iraq’s big guns and armor in Kuwait and southern Iraq are confirmed destroyed, the U.S. command said. Iraq once had about 4,200 tanks, 3,200 artillery pieces and 4,000 armored personnel carriers there. But air attacks have wiped out 750 tanks, 650 artillery pieces and more than 600 of the personnel carriers.

* ADVISERS, COMMANDERS CONFER: President Bush’s top two military advisers met with field commanders to decide when and where to launch a ground attack. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talked for eight hours with Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and other U.S. military leaders. The meeting in the map-lined “war room” of the Saudi Defense Ministry in Riyadh went longer than planned.

* OIL SLICK THREATENS: A Saudi environmental official said that signs of oil might appear near the site of the world’s largest desalination plant--at Jubayl--in two to three days. The slick is estimated at 21 million gallons.

* HIGHWAY UNDER ATTACK: Relentless bombing by allied planes has turned the highway connecting Baghdad and Amman, Jordan, into a deathtrap, according to reporters and travelers who have driven it recently. Hundreds of trucks, cars and other vehicles have been bombed, and huge craters remain. The 340-mile highway is Iraq’s only surface link to the outside world except for roads to Iran. The Iranians have limited cross-border traffic to refugees fleeing the war.

* AERIAL CAMPAIGN: The skies over Baghdad were quiet, in contrast with recent days. But travelers arriving from the southern port city of Basra said that intensive air raids continued there, targeting industrial sites and communications installations. Basra is the headquarters of the officers controlling the Iraqi forces in Kuwait.