The Day in the Gulf

ARMOR DEPLETED: U.S. military officials said that more than 1,300 Iraqi tanks have been destroyed by air attacks and that more than a third of Iraq’s artillery pieces and nearly a third of its armored fighting vehicles have been taken out. Two U.S. fliers died in the crash of an American EF-111A jet.

BAGHDAD AFTERMATH: Iraq vowed revenge for the U.S. air strike that reportedly left hundreds of civilians dead in a Baghdad structure. Outrage over the attack spread to neighboring Jordan and elsewhere in the Arab world. The U.S. said the structure was a command-and-control center; Iraq maintains it was a civilian shelter.

HOTEL SAFE FROM BOMBS: A U.S. official said that an Iraqi command post in Baghdad is safe from allied bomb attack because it is in the basement of a major downtown hotel. The Rashid Hotel is the base for many foreigners, including journalists, some of whom said they could find no such command post in the building.

PROTEST AT PENTAGON: Anti-war demonstrators splashed a Pentagon doorway with blood and oil, symbols of their opposition to the war in the oil-rich Gulf. The State Department issued rules requiring most Americans to get government permission to travel to Iraq or Kuwait.

SCUDS DISINTEGRATE: Iraq fired two Scud missiles at northern Saudi Arabia, but they broke up in the air.

KUWAITI SCENE: At least 200 Kuwaitis have been executed since the beginning of the allied air campaign against Iraq, 65 of them during a four-day period a week ago, a Kuwaiti official said. He said reports from Kuwaiti resistance fighters indicate that the Iraqi army appears to be preparing for a bloody, house-to-house fight in Kuwait city, sealing off windows and fortifying houses in strategic locations.