Iraqi Guard Mauled in Tank Battle

American tank crews, on the attack in one of the biggest armored battles since World War II, were ordered today to halt offensive fire against badly mauled Republican Guard tank divisions in southeastern Iraq.

The order to American troops came eight hours after as many as 800 tanks from the 1st and 3rd Armored divisions of the U.S. Army’s VII Corps were reported battling two armored divisions of the Republican Guard about 50 miles west of the city of Basra.

Even before President Bush ordered the halt, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf, said the fighting had virtually stopped in Kuwait.

Allied forces went into defensive positions, a senior military official said. He said Iraqi army units would be allowed to surrender through allied lines with their equipment. “The gate is open at 8 o’clock,” he said, referring to the morning hour in the Persian Gulf at which Bush’s order was implemented.

Bush’s order took effect 42 days after the Persian Gulf War began and 100 hours after allied troops launched their ground assault into Iraq and occupied Kuwait. In other developments before Bush issued his order:

* The United States said 79 Americans had been killed in action in the war; 44 were listed as missing in action, and nine U.S. military personnel were prisoners of war.

* Gen. Schwarzkopf said the number of Iraqi dead was “very, very large.” But he said it was impossible to estimate the number because the ground war had moved too quickly. “Even today,” he said, “when I was asking for estimates, every commander out there said: ‘We just can’t give you an estimate. It went too fast. We’ve gone by too quickly.’ ”

* Total Iraqi prisoners of war were estimated to number more than 80,000. The number, Schwarzkopf said, “is mounting on a continuing basis.”

* Kuwait city, capital of the nation the war liberated, was declared firmly in allied hands. The last battle for the city, fought at Kuwait’s international airport, ended in allied victory.

* Commanders reported an additional incident of death by “friendly fire.” It came in a mistaken American attack on two British personnel carriers. Nine British troops were killed. British officers said the incident was under investigation.

* Iraqi forces shot down an American F-16 jet fighter. Its pilot contacted U.S. forces. He suffered a broken leg, Schwarzkopf said. Two helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division went to his rescue. One chopper was shot down. The fate of the pilot and the helicopter crew was not immediately known.

* A news pool report said U.S. military officers in Iraq found a cache of Jordanian weapons shipped to Iraq long after the United Nations ordered an arms embargo against Baghdad. The report, cleared by American military censors, said it included six rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, hundreds of grenades, a dozen 120-millimeter mortars and many mortar rounds.

* French officers said seven Americans killed in fighting Tuesday were under French command. The Americans were part of the 82nd Airborne Division. The French said the deaths were caused by a mine or a delayed bomb. They said 18 Americans under French command were wounded.

Tank Battle

President Bush announced his order after Schwarzkopf reported some of the most violent fighting in the Persian Gulf War.

It came, Schwarzkopf said, after American and British divisions formed a “solid wall” that ran north-south roughly along the border of Kuwait and Iraq. The wall trapped what was left of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s army.

At the same time, the U.S. 101st Airborne Division and French troops, including Legionnaires, moved eastward from a far-west flank toward Basra.

There, American infantry and tank divisions, backed by attack helicopters, closed in on the last of Hussein’s vaunted Republican Guard.

One Pentagon official called it the largest tank battle since the Battle of the Bulge.

The 800 tanks from the U.S. VII Corps’ 1st and 3rd Armored divisions unleashed their fiercest weapons against a reported 250 to 300 Republican Guard tanks trapped south of the Euphrates River.

The goal was to trap the remnants of two Republican Guard armored divisions against the waterways southwest of Basra and cut off their avenues of retreat. U.S. Officers said roads were clogged with Iraqi military transport trucks headed north. Some troops even tried to cross the Euphrates on pontoons.

“We’ve got them where we want them,” a senior military officer in Riyadh said.

“It’s hard for them to get out. They’re bottlenecked. It’s like trying to get a 10-pound bag through a one-pound hole.”

As the Iraqi tanks moved toward the pontoons, they came under fire from allied aircraft.

Some soldiers were seen abandoning their tanks and walking north when they spotted the allied planes approaching, officers said.

Other units tried to fight their way through the allied line that had them trapped against the river, a military official said in Washington. But he said that effort was doomed by American helicopters and allied tanks.

Iraqi troops abandoned their equipment and fled in panic, he said.

Schwarzkopf called it “a classic tank battle.”

“You’ve got fire and maneuver. They are continuing to fight and shoot as our forces move forward, and our forces are in the business of outflanking them, taking them from the rear, using our attack helicopters, using our advanced technology. . . .

“For the last three days it’s been raining out there, it’s been dusty out there, there’s black smoke and haze in the air.”

The tank battle lasted more than 24 hours. Army officials in Washington said preliminary reports were that U.S. losses were light. A military official in Riyadh said there were no initial reports of American casualties. Three M-1A1 tanks and two Bradley fighting vehicles were reported destroyed.

The allies destroyed at least 182 Iraqi tanks, 50 armored personnel carriers, 32 artillery pieces, eight multiple-rocket launchers and 94 other vehicles, the official said. He said 12 Iraqi helicopters were destroyed--but did not describe their role in the battle.

The Republican Guard put up fierce resistance, but it was disorganized. Its units were badly “fragmented” and backed into a corner, one Pentagon official said. Regardless of Bush’s call for an end to offensive operations, he said, the battle could last only a matter of hours.

They (the Iraqis) were fighting “because they don’t see any other alternative,” said one U.S. military source.

Bush’s order, the source said, would give the Iraqi units an opportunity to surrender.

A third Iraqi armored unit, the veteran Tawakalna (Go With God) mechanized division, was destroyed on Tuesday and two more were severely crippled, senior military officials said.

This meant, Schwarzkopf said, that a total of 29 of Iraq’s 42 army divisions were put out of service by allied bombing and artillery barrages. A senior military official in Riyadh said later that 40 of the 42 divisions were destroyed or crippled.

About a division and a half of Iraq’s army remain, said the official, who asked not to be identified. He said they were scattered in pockets in the Euphrates River Valley and northern Kuwait but have little ability to fight.

“They’re in bits,” the official said.

“They started out with over 4,000 tanks,” Schwarzkopf said. “As of today, we have over 3,000 confirmed destroyed, and I do mean destroyed or captured. . . . The armored vehicle count is also very, very high. And, of course, you can see we’re doing great damage to the artillery. . . .

“There’s not enough (armament) left at all for him (Hussein) to be a regional threat, an offensive regional threat. . . . He’s got a very large army, but most of the army that is left north of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley is an infantry army. It’s not an armored army--it’s not an armor-heavy army--which means it really isn’t an offensive army.

“It doesn’t have enough left (to be a threat) unless someone chooses to rearm them in the future.”

At one point, Schwarzkopf said, the 101st Airborne Division had gotten to within 150 miles of Baghdad.

“There was nobody between us and Baghdad,” he said.

“If it had been our intention to take Iraq, if it had been our intention to destroy the country, if it had been our intention to overrun the country, we could have done it unopposed,” the general said.

“But that was not our intention. We had never said it was our intention. Our intention was purely to eject the Iraqis out of Kuwait and destroy the military power that had come in there.”

Low U.S. Toll

Schwarzkopf called the low number of allied combat deaths--126 in all, including the 79 Americans, miraculous. “It will never be miraculous to the families of those people,” he said, “but it is miraculous.”

He said the total number of Iraqi dead might never be known.

“I don’t think there’s ever been--ever in the history of warfare--been a successful count of dead,” he declared. “And one of the reasons is . . . because it’s necessary to lay those people to rest, for a lot of reasons, and that happens.

“So I would say, no, there will never be an exact count.

“You know,” Schwarzkopf said, “probably in the days to come you are going to hear many, many stories, either over-inflated or under-inflated, depending upon who you hear them from. The people who will know best, unfortunately, are the families that won’t see their loved ones come home.”

In Washington, a spokesman for Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, told the Washington Post that Iraqi dead and wounded are believed to number between 85,000 and 100,000.

That total would include those killed in both the air and ground campaigns.

Kuwait City

In Kuwait city, allied forces were mopping up.

U.S. Marine reconnaissance elements entered the city early Wednesday. Other American troops and Arab forces moved toward the capital from the south and fought past an armored Iraqi unit entrenched at Kuwait city’s airport.

The tank battle lasted until early today, when a Marine armored division destroyed 100 T-55 tanks. The victory ended the last organized resistance in the city. “They (the allies) are now in the process of clearing Kuwait city entirely and assuring that it’s absolutely secure,” Gen. Schwarzkopf said.

“The 1st Marine Division continues to hold Kuwait international airport,” he said. “The 2nd Marine Division continues to be in a position where it blocks any egress out of the city of Kuwait so no one can leave.”

The United States had information, however, that retreating Iraqis took thousands of Kuwaitis with them when they fled the city, Schwarzkopf said.

“I don’t think there’s any question about the fact that there was a very, very large number of young Kuwaitis--males--taken out of that city within the last week or two,” he said. “But that pales, that pales to insignificance compared to the absolutely unspeakable atrocities that occurred in Kuwait in the last week. . . .

“They’re not a part of the same human race, the people that did that, that the rest of us are.”

Schwarzkopf said there was anecdotal information that some of the Kuwaitis were taken to Basra and others all the way to Baghdad.

“We were told 100 different reasons why they were taken,” he said. “No. 1, to be a bargaining chip if the time came when bargaining chips were needed.

“Another one was for retribution.”

As joyous Kuwaitis celebrated in the streets, armed civilians reportedly hunted down what were said to be fewer than 100 Iraqi soldiers--potential snipers--hiding out in the city. The civilians told of rapes, thefts, destruction, torture and, finally, the abductions.

Friendly Fire

In the incident of friendly fire, commanders said it was aimed at two British personnel carriers. Gen. Schwarzkopf called them scout cars. British Col. Barry Stevens said they were Warrior infantry fighting vehicles.

They were mistakenly attacked by two American A-10 Warthog warplanes, Schwarzkopf said. Stevens said the attack was by a single A-10.

Both officers said nine British soldiers were killed.

“We deeply regret that,” Schwarzkopf said. “There’s no excuse for it.”

Given the complicated battle maneuvers, diversity of forces, differences in language and bad weather, he said, “I feel quite lucky that we didn’t have more of this type of incident. . . . We went to extraordinary lengths to try and prevent that type of thing from happening. It’s a terrible tragedy, and I’m sorry that it happened.”

Schwarzkopf said he had information that a forward air controller was involved in directing the American fire, “and that would indicate that it was during the afternoon” and not during darkness.”

Jordanian Weapons

The Jordanian weapons reportedly were found in a bunker along the banks of the Euphrates River, more than 100 miles north of the Iraq-Kuwait border.

Boxes containing the weapons were marked in English as coming from the General Military Command, Amman, Jordan.

American military officers, cited in a news pool report containing the information, called the discovery the first evidence that some countries broke the arms embargo, imposed in August following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

WAR NUMBERS At a military briefing Wednesday, U.S. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf offered the following tallies: IRAQI EQUIPMENT

Prewar Strength Destroyed or captured Tanks 4,230 3,008 Armored vehicles 2,870 1,856 Artillery 3,110 2,140

U.S. CASUALTY COUNT

Killed in action Wounded in action MIA Air war 23 34 39 Scud attack 28 90 0 Ground war 28 89 5 Total 79 213 44

Times staff writers John M. Broder in Washington and Rone Tempest in Paris contributed to this report.