Tide of Arms, Troops Flows Toward Front : Gulf War: U.S. reports loss of three planes. Iraqis claim more civilian deaths from allied bombing.

As troops, war machinery and supply trucks, stretching from horizon to horizon, rolled into position Saturday for a long-awaited ground assault into Kuwait, U.S. and allied warplanes bombed Iraqi forces so hard just across the front lines that they rocked U.S. Marines in their foxholes.

While the allied planes mounted their thundering attack, the Iraqi government said British jets had swooped down on the central Iraqi town of Fallouja two days before, missed one of their targets and hit an apartment house and an outdoor market filled with civilians, killing 130 people and hurting another 78.

Neither British nor U.S. commanders in Riyadh said they knew of the deaths. But at the Pentagon, U.S. military officials said they have evidence that in another instance, the Iraqis damaged one of their own buildings so they could blame allied bombing. One official said it was a mosque in the city of Basra.

In other developments:

* Iraqi antiaircraft gunners shot down two U.S. A-10 Warthog antitank jets as they attacked Republican Guard positions in northwest Kuwait. Both pilots were listed as missing in action. An American F-16C jet fighter crashed as it tried to make an instrument approach on landing at an allied base. The pilot was killed.

* Iraq fired two Scud missiles at Israel, but an Israeli military spokesman said they landed in open areas and caused no damage or casualties. Both had conventional warheads; one hit in southern Israel. The spokesman declined to speculate about whether it was aimed at Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona.

- Defense Secretary Dick Cheney dismissed all suggestions of any cease-fire or a pause in allied bombing. Any letup, he said, could cost additional American lives. Cheney said the war could end in one of only two ways: when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein leaves Kuwait or when allied forces throw him out.

Ground Assault

At the front, preparations for a land battle moved inexorably forward.

Allied jets flew 2,600 sorties in 24 hours, more than a quarter of them directed at the Kuwaiti theater of operations.

The bombing reached its peak intensity shortly before dawn, according to a news pool report from the front lines. It said the force of the attack was so severe that it shook American Marines as they crouched in their foxholes on the Saudi side of the Kuwaiti border.

The bombs fell, the report said, at the rate of several per second.

Some of the bombardment was concentrated on Iraqi minefields lying in wait for allied troops to cross the border. American B-52s dropped heavy bombs on the mines to blow open a path for advancing men and tanks.

Military officials said some of the bombs were “daisy cutters”--15,000-pound explosives dropped from C-130 aircraft.

At the same time, U.S. Army Apache attack helicopters made their first night raids on Iraqi positions. American officers said the helicopters knocked out a bunker, four military vehicles and two radar units.

There was no return fire, the officers said.

In fact, Iraqi forces hardly moved, U.S. commanders said. The Iraqis made a few minor adjustments in their positions, the commanders said, but these appeared to be nothing more than efforts to consolidate their forces.

The goal of the bombing, one high-ranking officer said, was to soften up the battlefield for a ground assault. “We have migrated slowly downward” on the map, the officer said. “I think we’re now saying, ‘Let’s get this battlefield shaped in case we have to go across the (Saudi-Kuwaiti) border.’ ”

But one military official cautioned against thinking this meant that Iraqi troops had been cut off from supplies coming from the north. The bombing, he said, was not blanketing the entire battlefield on a daily basis.

“It is a huge army out there,” he said, referring to the Iraqis. “(They are) spread out over an area that’s as large as the state of California. No matter how much air we put up there, there are some guys who are going to be getting relief.”

Allied troops, on the other hand, were on the move. Tens of thousands of Marines were taking battle positions, as plans got their final adjustments for the expected ground attack across the border into southern Kuwait.

Throughout much of this past week, a huge stream of soldiers and war materiel, stretching as far as the eye could see, has been on the march. In places where the troops have stopped, their camps have been barely visible.

Tents have been hidden by fortifying berms, sandbags and deep trenches.

In the face of this preparation, American military officials said, the Iraqis have given no sign of surrender or retreat.

“There is no northern movement,” said one knowledgeable military official. “There was no one who got out of his hole and raised a white flag.”

Bombed Town

Foreign reporters were escorted by Iraqi Information Ministry officials to the town of Fallouja, 40 miles west of Baghdad, to inspect what the Iraqis said was the destruction left by a British air raid on Thursday.

The reporters found shattered concrete buildings in the market area of the town, on the Euphrates River.

They also found a hospital ward where injured people were being treated.

The Iraqis said the destruction occurred when British Tornado jet fighters, apparently aiming for two bridges over the Euphrates, demolished one--but missed the second and hit the nearby multistory apartment building and the outdoor market.

The Iraqis said one of the Tornadoes was shot down.

British military officials had reported a Tornado shot down over Iraq on Thursday and listed its two-member crew as missing. They said Saturday that they are investigating the Iraqi report.

The allied command in Riyadh said it had no information about the Iraqi claim. “I’m not aware of that report,” said Marine Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal, deputy operations director for the Central Command. “I wouldn’t dare speculate on it.”

At the Pentagon, as well, military officials said they had no information about the report.

But Rear Adm. John (Mike) McConnell, director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States has “information that indicates that the Iraqis have deliberately planned what appears to be collateral damage. . . .

“They are faking some of it,” McConnell said. But he indicated that he was not talking about Fallouja. “We saw them earlier in the (war) . . . inflict some damage on a specific building and then allow media access,” he said. “ . . . (And) we are absolutely certain that damage was not inflicted by coalition forces.”

He said there was no evidence that any Iraqis were killed in the incident.

McConnell declined to identify the building or say where it was or when the incident happened. “We have chosen at this point not to parade that information in front of you,” he told reporters, “because we get into a claim-counterclaim situation.”

He said he will consult with his superiors to determine whether he could be specific and offer evidence to support his statements.

A Pentagon official, who asked to remain anonymous, said the building in question was a mosque in the southern city of Basra.

The Iraqis, he said, blew it up a week ago to make it appear to have been bombed.

In Baghdad, Associated Press correspondent Salah Nasrawi reported that allied air attacks went on without surcease.

One ear-piercing explosion after another shook the city, he said, and Iraqi antiaircraft gunners fired barrage after barrage at the raiding warplanes.

Air Casualties

It was antiaircraft fire that hit the two American A-10s as they struck bunkers filled with Republican Guard troops.

Another A-10, however, shot down an Iraqi helicopter with 30-millimeter cannon fire. Gen. Neal said the kill occurred over western Iraq and increased Iraqi air losses to a total of 135 fixed-wing aircraft and six helicopters.

In addition, Neal said, American planes knocked out one fixed launch site for Iraqi Scud missiles and possibly four others. He said none contained missiles.

The U.S. Air Force F-16 crashed “on the Arabian Peninsula,” Neal said. He declined to be more specific on grounds that it might provide the Iraqis with the location of the allied base where the jet was trying to land.

The American command also confirmed the loss several days ago of an EF-111 high-tech radar-jamming aircraft in a crash in northern Saudi Arabia as it returned from a combat mission. But the command listed the aircraft as a noncombat loss.

This brought the total allied aircraft lost in the war to 36. Seventeen were U.S. planes.

The allies list 33 people killed in action, including 14 Americans.

Cheney

Defense Secretary Cheney, appearing on Cable News Network’s “Newsmaker Saturday,” was emphatic about denying the Iraqis any letup in the war.

“To grant him (Saddam Hussein) a cease-fire could give him time to reposition his equipment, resupply his forces, put him in a position where he could do serious damage and ultimately extract a higher cost in terms of lives than would otherwise be the case,” Cheney said. “So we really have no interest in a cease-fire. . . .”

Asked if there was any way Hussein could end the war without a total withdrawal from Kuwait, Cheney replied:

“There’s no middle ground. There’s no ‘let him keep half of Kuwait.’ There’s no pause or cease-fire. There’s no new package to be put together. This will end in one of two ways: It will end when he withdraws from Kuwait, or it will end when he is expelled from Kuwait by military force.

“There’s no other acceptable outcome.”

Kennedy reported from Riyadh and Broder from Washington. Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers Mark Fineman in Amman, Jordan, Carey Goldberg in Tel Aviv and Jim Mann in Washington.