The Day in the Gulf

* SCUD ATTACKS: Iraq launched Scud missiles armed with conventional warheads into central Israel Monday and early today, and the second attack injured several people, officials said. Israel said the Scud in Monday’s attack fell in an uninhabited area. Late Monday, Patriot missiles intercepted an Iraq-fired Scud near Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

* MINE GAMES: A U.S. military official said mines sown in southern Kuwait may contain nerve and mustard gases. The Iraqis have laid an estimated half a million mines along the Kuwaiti and Iraqi borders, the official said, and many of them may contain hard-to-detect plastics as well as chemical weapons.

* SORTIES INCREASE: Brightening skies enabled air commanders to mount 2,900 sorties over 24 hours, hundreds more than on any recent day. The U.S Command said 750 missions were directed against Iraqi positions in Kuwait, including 200 against the elite Republican Guard. Basra, in southern Iraq, was hit hard again.

* BRITISH GET A HIT: Out in Persian Gulf waters, a British navy helicopter caught a 75-foot Iraqi patrol boat off Faylaka Island, east of Kuwait city, and blasted it with two air-to-sea missiles, leaving it ablaze and sinking, the British reported.

* CEASE-FIRE REJECTED: Baghdad Radio declared that Saddam Hussein’s regime would not accept a cease-fire in the conflict. “Iraq will never cease firing before total victory is achieved,” the broadcast said, reinforcing a Sunday announcement that the decision to fight is “irrevocable.”

* 17-YEAR-OLDS IN LINE: Iraq announced that all 17-year-olds will be conscripted into the army. They were ordered to report to conscription offices between Friday and March 20 or face unspecified legal action.