Front-Line Enemy Troops Get Biggest Pounding of War : Gulf conflict: 50 oil fires are burning in Kuwait. Four mobile Scud launchers reportedly destroyed by U.S. jets.

Allied forces battered Iraqi front-line positions along the Kuwaiti border from the land, air and sea Tuesday in the most extensive assault on forward positions by the multinational coalition since the beginning of the war.

Military officials also reported that more than 50 fires--possibly started by Iraqi sabotage or allied bombing--are burning at oil storage and related facilities throughout Kuwait.

Rear Adm. John (Mike) McConnell, director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the fires pose “a difficult problem” because they can obscure the gun sights of allied warplanes and reduce visibility.

In addition, American pilots reported knocking out four mobile Scud missile launchers, as well as a convoy of up to 50 vehicles in southern Kuwait.

Marine Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal said at a press briefing here that the assault on the Iraqi front lines was launched by both the Saudis and the Americans against targets in southeastern Kuwait.

“We thought there was a good opportunity to take them on,” said Neal, who described the targets as dug-in tanks, artillery and armored personnel carriers.

In other developments:

* Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appeared to open the way to dialogue on the crisis, announcing that he is willing to discuss “a peaceful, political, equitable and honorable solution” to the war. But he did not mention the key demand spelled out in United Nations resolutions--withdrawal from Kuwait--and American officials stressed that the demand has not changed.

* Allied air strikes reportedly demolished the headquarters of an Iraqi ministry headed by Hussein’s cousin, as well as the fourth of the six bridges across Baghdad’s Tigris River.

* Military officials said many desperate Iraqi troops, already plagued by shortages of food, water and medical supplies, are fearful that almost any kind of wound could be fatal because no treatment is available.

* The Pentagon on Tuesday invoked a Civil War-era law called the “feed and forage act,” offering the first direct evidence that Operation Desert Storm will drive the 1991 defense budget well above the level appropriated by Congress.

* In the first public acknowledgment that the Pentagon is watching the movements of Hussein, U.S. intelligence officials said “we know he moves frequently” from place to place to avoid harm.

* A television news report--denied by the Pentagon--said the U.S. government has agreed to give Israel the electronic codes its aircraft need to attack Scud missile launchers in western Iraq, but only if Israel waits for allied forces to launch their ground campaign.

Kuwaiti Fires

Many of the blazes in Kuwait have been visible for several days and appear to involve burning petroleum at oil pumping and refining stations, officials said, indicating potentially significant damage to Kuwait’s vital oil industry.

Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly, operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon believes that the fires can be “dealt with fairly rapidly” once the areas in which they are located are in allied hands.

Adm. McConnell said the source of the fires is uncertain, but he pointed out that Iraqis had placed explosive charges on many oil wells soon after the war started. Some of the fires, he added, may have been caused by allied air strikes against refinery facilities.

The number of fires has not changed significantly during the past week, he said.

“It’s going to take something to put them out,” Gen. Kelly said. “But we hope we’ll be able to do a fair job of that.”

Allied Bombardment

The allied assault on positions in southern Kuwait included shelling from the battleship Missouri as well as bombing runs, artillery and multi-launch rocket systems. The Iraqis did not return fire during the three-hour bombardment, and there was no sign that they were massing, Neal said.

The bombarding of forward Iraqi positions came on a day in which the allies launched an estimated 2,600 air sorties, bringing the total since the beginning of the war to more than 65,000.

In Washington, Kelly characterized Tuesday as a “healthy day of bombing,” contributing to a 90% reduction of Iraq’s ability to resupply its troops in and around Kuwait.

By Tuesday, Kelly said, half of Iraq’s nearly 1,000 hardened aircraft shelters had been destroyed in bombing, further eroding the ability of the Iraqi air force to muster a significant challenge to the allies’ control of the skies over Iraq and Kuwait.

An official Iraqi military communique broadcast by Baghdad Radio confirmed the continuing heavy bombardment of its occupation troops in Kuwait and supply lines in southern Iraq. It reported 96 air raids on military targets in “the southern operations sector.” Attacks on military targets rarely have been reported in previous communiques.

The Scud launchers were hit overnight, after the missiles were fired at both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Neal said U.S. pilots, on what has become known as “Scud patrols,” knocked out four launch sites and that a fifth blew up, apparently with a missile ready to be fired.

“What we think is that one of the Iraqi technicians was checking the fuel line with a match,” Neal joked, attempting to keep a straight face.

Neal also said an American F-15 shot down an Iraqi helicopter overnight in northern Iraq and that 675 sorties were flown against Iraqi positions in Kuwait. Of those, about 225--including B-52 bombing runs--were against Iraq’s Republican Guard, the force viewed as the best troops arrayed against the allies.

Baghdad Damage

Iraqi officials contended that allied bombing raids had once again hit a number of civilian targets in Baghdad and other cities. The government said the most recent targets were a hospital and a nursery. It has claimed that thousands of people have been killed since the start of the air war.

Eyewitnesses reported planes striking with relative impunity all day Tuesday, bombing the Local Government Ministry and yet another bridge across the Tigris River. With only two spans remaining, most observers in Baghdad said they expected the allies to effectively split the Iraqi capital in half before the end of the week.

One report from the capital said the air strikes continued to meet with some antiaircraft fire, but it appeared to be ineffective.

Analysts saw the bombing of the ministry building as largely symbolic. The ministry is headed by Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan Majid, who also was put in charge of the occupation of Kuwait soon after the Iraqi invasion Aug. 2.

There was no indication that Majid was at the ministry during the early morning attacks. Reporters taken to the site six hours later saw flames rising from the rubble. Majid is known as one of Hussein’s toughest and most trusted aides, and he has often been cited as instrumental in Iraq’s poison gas attacks on Kurdish rebels within Iraq during the late 1980s.

Six people were killed and 17 wounded in the attack on the ministry complex, officials said, adding that two of the dead were in a bomb shelter during the air raid.

Desperate Troops

Incessant bombing runs over Iraq and Kuwait--along with widespread shortages--have left Iraqi troops desperate, and it has become apparent that they are no longer taking care of their war machinery, U.S. military officials said.

Neal said tanks and other vehicles have rusted and have not been lubricated, showing a lack of regular maintenance.

“I don’t think anybody in his right mind is going to lift up the top of his engine compartment to check the oil while F-15s and B-52s are flying over,” the general said.

He said the Republican Guard members are no doubt less desperate because they are better treated and much closer to food distribution centers than the regular troops on the front lines.

“Now the Iraqis are having difficulty in supplying their troops with food and water, things as basic as that,” Kelly said in Washington. He added that Iraqi troops are using food and water stocked before the air war began, and that defecting troops from the southern infantry units reported getting a small piece of bread, four spoons of rice and very little water each day.

Kelly and McConnell said that Iraqi ground troops, described as the “only effective fighting force left,” are “relentlessly getting hit” by aerial bombardment.

“They are degrading over time in terms of their capability,” said Kelly. “If they are saving their ‘Sunday punch,’ they may losing it as we speak.”

The bombing may also be causing more Iraqi soldiers to desert. Neal said six Iraqis had surrendered to U.S. troops within the last 24 hours, while eight others gave themselves up to Egyptian soldiers.

Meanwhile, a senior Western diplomat said Tuesday that the six people arrested in the Saudi Arabian city of Jidda for firing into a bus with Americans aboard had been “externally directed--no question.” He also disclosed the arrests of others who have been “planning incidents--sometimes fairly large-scale arrests, sometimes more than a dozen.”

Feed and Forage’

If the “feed and forage” law had not been invoked, the Army would have run out of funds to operate and maintain its equipment and train its troops by April, and the Marine Corps would have depleted its funds by the end of March, Defense Department spokesman Pete Williams said.

The act permits the military services to spend money during wartime beyond levels appropriated by Congress. The Pentagon plans to make a formal supplemental appropriations request next week covering anticipated expenses beyond the $69 billion that Congress approved for spending on “operations and maintenance” of U.S. troops and equipment.

Williams said the cost of transporting Army and Marine Corps troops to Saudi Arabia has driven both the Army and the Marines to the limits of the congressionally earmarked spending power.

“The basic reason you have this act is so that you won’t run out of money during a war,” said Williams.

Hussein’s Moves

During the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, the Iraqi leader often spent the night “in a mosque,” said McConnell.

“If he’s out and about in civilian areas, he’s pretty safe because he knows we’re not targeting those areas,” added Kelly.

American officials have said repeatedly that they are not targeting Hussein in their bombing runs. But they have added that they would consider the Iraqi leader fair game if, as a military commander, he were killed or wounded in an attack on military command centers.

In fact, Kelly said, the United States would not be responsible for any injury that allied bombers might cause to Soviet peace envoy Yevgeny M. Primakov, who is in Baghdad to discuss cease-fire initiatives with the Iraqi leader.

“It has to be between Mr. Hussein and the Russian envoy as to where they meet and what the arrangements are,” said Kelly. “If we don’t know where they are, we can’t very well hit a target in order to try to avoid them. We have business as usual in terms of our attack.”

Aircraft Codes

Without the electronic codes enabling allied aircraft to identify each other, Israeli aircraft would risk being attacked by planes from the multinational force operating over Iraq.

CBS News said it learned that Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens told U.S. officials in Washington on Monday that domestic pressure is pushing Israel to retaliate against Iraq but that such action would require U.S. cooperation.

A senior Pentagon official denied the CBS report that the United States has given Israel the electronic codes. “This is not the case,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Since Iraq began hitting Israel with Scud ballistic missiles on Jan. 18, the second day of the Gulf War, Washington has publicly praised Israel’s restraint in not retaliating.

Besides the political pressure to retaliate, CBS said, the Israelis said they could do a better job of eliminating the Scud launchers because they have intelligence reports to help pinpoint them. The Israelis, however, did not want to share their information with the coalition’s Arab members, the network said.

Kennedy reported from Riyadh and Healy from Washington. Times staff writer Mark Fineman in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this story.