2 Americans Killed on Still-Risky Battlefield : Aftermath: Doctor and medical aide are victims of mines. Thousands of Iraqi troops still roam the desert.

Allied troops buried Iraq’s dead in mass graves Friday, while the remnants of President Saddam Hussein’s army roamed or hid in the battle-torn desert--some apparently unaware that the Gulf War had been called off.

An American doctor and a medical specialist were killed by land mines, and U.S. infantrymen exchanged gunfire with Iraqi soldiers shooting from a bus stopped at a checkpoint. Six Iraqis were killed and six wounded, Saudi sources said.

“The battlefield is still a very dangerous area,” said U.S. Marine Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal, deputy operations director of the Central Command. “It’s a very, very dangerous battlefield.”

The danger, Neal said, came from the inability of thousands of scattered Iraqi soldiers, their communications shattered, to know that the fighting is over.

In other developments:

* U.S. military officials increased their count of Americans killed in action to 89. The total included an additional 10 killed since the beginning of the allied ground assault into Kuwait and Iraq. Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, attributed the increase to “a reporting lag.”

* Coalition intelligence experts think that as many as 150,000 Iraqis died in the war, most of them in bombing raids, NBC News reported. The allied military command has refused to provide any estimate, saying there had been too little time during battle to count the dead. A count is beginning, senior military officials said, and soldiers are fanning out across battlefields to bury an “enormous” number of Iraqi victims after trying to identify them.

* The Iraqis are believed to have tortured and killed two British airmen held as prisoners of war, a high-ranking coalition officer said. The officer’s report came as checkpoints were set up on a highway from Kuwait city to the Iraqi city of Basra to screen out fleeing Iraqis suspected of committing atrocities against Kuwaiti civilians during the occupation.

* The United States reopened its embassy in Kuwait city. Saudi and Kuwaiti soldiers celebrated by firing their machine guns into the air. Ambassador Edward W. (Skip) Gnehm Jr. arrived by helicopter at the embassy compound. “I’m proud that I’m an American,” Gnehm said, praising U.S. military personnel for helping “make Kuwait free again.”

* Some Iraqi soldiers hospitalized in Kuwait before hostilities ended were killed with lethal injections, according to a woman who claimed she gave the shots. She told Britain’s Independent Television News that she killed 22 of them while working as a volunteer nurse. Her face was masked on camera. She said she wanted to do her part against the enemy.

Incidents

With cease-fire negotiations scheduled to begin Sunday between Iraqi and American military commanders, allied forces continued to run into pockets of Iraqi soldiers ready to surrender, go home and, in some cases, fight.

“They’re literally everywhere,” said a U.S. military official with access to intelligence reports.

Some were milling about, the official said, and others were “hunkered down” waiting to fight or for their supplies to run out. And by the dozens, many continued to surrender to any outsider who happened by.

The equivalent of five mechanized battalions and three infantry battalions--about 4,800 men--were thought to be making their way northward to the Euphrates River, mostly along back roads in an attempt to return home, U.S. sources said.

Many were allowed to pass through allied lines, their weapons in hand, perhaps because officials did not want to further swell the ranks of Iraqi POWs. Convoys of up to 60 vehicles were spotted traveling north toward Baghdad above the Euphrates. Others who showed “hostile intentions” were disarmed and taken prisoner.

At the Pentagon, Rear Adm. John (Mike) McConnell, intelligence director for the Joint Chiefs, said it was difficult to know how many of the Iraqis traveling north were members of the Republican Guard.

“Over time,” McConnell told reporters, “we’ll probably be able to make some assessment on what’s left. But the point I would highlight for you is even if they’re going north and they are still alive, it is not an effective fighting force. It is not something we have to contend with in the next few months, or six months. . . .”

“Or years,” Gen. Kelly added.

“They would have to get somewhere, get organized and get weapons.” McConnell said. “If they do all that, we’ll know about it.”

“And they would have to rearm,” Kelly declared. “They would have to become a team again, which they’re not right now. And as a matter of fact, it’s my strongly held belief that when this defeated army gets back to Baghdad, they’re going to be pretty mad.”

That anger, he said, might contribute to the downfall of Hussein.

A contingent of Iraqi soldiers remained staked out--or stranded--on the Bubiyan and Faylakah islands off Kuwait’s coast, pieces of Kuwaiti territory that would have figured in an amphibious landing by U.S. Marines.

Asked whether allied forces planned to round up those Iraqis, one senior officer said, “Eventually. Is anybody in a hurry?”

Using loudspeakers, allied troops who have stepped up their “policing” efforts aimed at ridding the war theater of Iraqi remnants were trying to spread the word that fighting had been suspended.

Military commanders attributed the confusion among Iraqi troops to the fact that their communication systems had been destroyed. “It’s almost as if there’s such chaos within the hierarchy, the command-and-control structure, (that) it is sort of everybody on his own,” said one senior military officer.

The same breakdown in communications that led to Iraq’s disastrous performance on the battlefield caused isolated incidents of hostilities, American officials said.

Early Friday morning, two Iraqi buses were stopped at a U.S. checkpoint on a road north of Kuwait city. As soldiers questioned the occupants of the first bus, shots rang out from the second, Gen. Neal said.

“The first bus seemed to accept what was going on without a problem, but the second bus all of a sudden opened fire on U.S. troops,” he said. “Fortunately, their aim wasn’t too good, and they paid the price.”

Neal said nine Iraqis were captured. He did not mention casualties.

Saudi officials, however, said that six Iraqis were killed and six were wounded.

Sweeps for mines continued along the desert floor and off Kuwait’s coast. About 120 mines have been destroyed in recent days.

A vehicle carrying an American doctor and a U.S. medical specialist hit a land mine Friday, killing the doctor. The medical specialist got out of the car, stepped on another mine and also was killed. The driver was wounded. The group had been traveling across desert terrain to reach a group of Iraqis they thought were surrendering.

Mines, Neal said, “remain a significant threat.” He said Iraq has failed so far to supply coalition forces with information on where mines have been laid.

At the Pentagon, Gen. Kelly told reporters that Iraq sometimes surrounded antitank mines with antipersonnel mines.

“It’s a tough job to get them out,” he said.

Burying the Dead

Americans have assigned the grim job of identifying Iraqi dead to five platoons of Arab soldiers.

The platoons, each including 35 to 40 men, were burying the bodies in individual graves after taking photographs, fingerprints and identification papers in an effort to compile a list of the dead.

“In Islam . . . they would say a prayer,” Saudi Royal Air Force Lt. Col. Mohammed Rashid, a spokesman for the Joint Arab Forces, said in an interview. “But in this case, in war, time does not permit.”

For the British, soldiers of their 1st Armored Division have begun burying Iraqi dead in mass graves, Col. Barry Stevens said.

“There are a lot of dead,” Stevens said. “I can’t give you a precise figure, but there are large numbers.

“We’ve been laying them to rest in mass graves . . . noting the position of those graves, registering them, marking them,” he said. “Where it’s possible, we’ve been identifying the bodies.”

All lists of names will be forwarded to the International Red Cross, officials said.

The difficulty in obtaining a death toll for the Iraqis has become frustrating for many reporters. More than half a million Iraqi soldiers were said to have been sent to the war theater--and most still cannot be accounted for, despite a large number of POWs, additional deserters and soldiers who continue to flee.

Gen. Neal said he believes the number of Iraqi casualties is “enormous.” But he again refused to make a body count--despite the fact that he sees a clear political objective in letting the truth be known.

If the Iraqi people knew of their high rate of casualties, he suggested, a groundswell of unrest might be stirred that would jeopardize Hussein’s hold on power.

“You can’t hide the disappearance . . . of what’s probably going to be significant numbers of Iraqi soldiers,” Neal said. “I think you’re going to see some serious questioning. I think what you’re going to see is an emerging realization of what he has done to the country, and I hope it leads to his removal.”

Hussein often controlled the release of casualty figures during the Iran-Iraq War to soften the blow to his people at home, Neal said.

Atrocities

It was not immediately clear whether the two airmen believed tortured and killed were the two known British prisoners of war or other British servicemen thought to be missing in action.

There are 13 known allied POWs: nine Americans, two Britons, one Italian and one Kuwaiti. There are an additional 66 allies listed as MIAs: 45 Americans, 10 Britons, 10 Saudis and an Italian.

The coalition officer who reported the allegations, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said only that “several military intelligence sources are sure that the men were tortured and killed.”

His information contrasted sharply with a report that the Algerian Red Crescent Organization has told Red Cross officials in Rome that all prisoners of war held by Iraq are in good condition. Italian officials said there was no way to confirm the Red Crescent’s report.

Meanwhile, in Kuwait, allied forces have been drawing up lists of Iraqi battalions and officers suspected of abusing local citizens during the occupation.

Atrocities in Kuwait city were said to range from murder, torture and rape to the burning of oil wells and trashing of hospitals.

The Iraqi commander in charge of the occupation of Kuwait city, along with his security forces, apparently escaped ahead of invading allied forces and may elude punishment, a senior U.S. military officer revealed Friday.

The Iraqi commander, identified by the Associated Press as Ali Hassan Majid and said to be a cousin of Saddam Hussein, is the same officer who oversaw the use of chemical gas against Iraq’s Kurdish minority, a tactic that killed thousands and was denounced worldwide.

“The unfortunate side of this thing is that the Iraqi security forces saw the handwriting on the wall early, and they got out” before the Marines arrived, the U.S. officer said.

Reports of atrocities from the Kuwaiti resistance had been mounting ever since Iraq seized the small desert emirate, but the American officer said many of those reports have to be taken “with a grain of salt.”

Nonetheless, even “if you discounted 70% of them, you still had enough there that would satisfy several judges for quite a while,” the officer said.

Correspondent Stewart Payne reported in Friday’s London Evening Standard that he had seen rows of “mutilated Kuwaiti torture victims” in the Kuwait city morgue.

“Their bodies are blackened by electrodes, their wrists and ankles cut by steel wire,” he wrote. “Some have had their eyes gouged out.

“All have been savagely beaten, covered from head to toe in bruises, their clothing bloodstained and torn.”

He reported that morgue attendant Subhi Younis showed him 24 bodies and said such corpses have been processed regularly ever since the Iraqi invasion Aug. 2.

President Bush has stressed that although the allies are not “targeting” Hussein, “nobody can be absolved” under international law for any war crimes they may have committed.

Referring to one feared violation of international law, Gen. Neal suggested that American officials may have overestimated Hussein’s ability to launch a chemical attack against the allies. The use of chemicals against troops is specifically forbidden under the Geneva Conventions, to which Iraq is a signatory.

Only two chemical bunkers have been found, according to the Pentagon.

Moreover, Neal said, many Iraqi troops had such poor protective equipment that they might have been reluctant to use unconventional weapons.

“It seems that the Iraqis were not that comfortable . . . operating in a dirty environment,” he said. “We might have really created a picture that they had a better capability than they really possess.”

U.S. Embassy

At exactly 12:33 p.m. Friday, as American soldiers braced at attention, the American flag was raised again at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait city.

It was the same flag that former Ambassador W. Nathaniel Howell III and the remainder of his staff had taken with them when they reluctantly abandoned the embassy 2 1/2 months ago.

“It’s an exciting day of my own life,” said Gnehm, the new ambassador. “I’m just delighted to be here. I want you to know that I was ready to come in August, but the Iraqis got here first.”

Despite the invasion by Hussein’s troops, Gnehm said, Bush had told him: “Skip, you’re going to Kuwait.”

“I never doubted that,” said Gnehm, who was sworn in during January but had to serve the first portion of his term in Taif, Saudi Arabia, where the emir of Kuwait had set up his government in exile.

Friday morning, well before the new ambassador had arrived, an impromptu procession of cars began streaming past the embassy gates, tooting horns and waving Kuwaiti, Saudi Arabian and American flags.

Pedestrian revelers fell in with the cars, dancing along to the beat of drums. The joyous gunfire--which drew looks of dismay from the U.S. special operations troops guarding the embassy--began as Gnehm arrived.

“What goes up, must come down,” one American soldier told the Associated Press. “I’m just glad I’m not where these rounds are coming down.”

Army Col. Jesse L. Johnson, commander of the special operations troops, said that because of concerns about booby traps, his men used explosives on Thursday to blast open the doors to the chancellery building.

Johnson’s subordinates said that while there was evidence the Iraqis had used the building during their occupation of Kuwait, “there were no bullet holes, no trashing, no looting.”

State Department officials said the embassy’s first job will be to provide technical advice to the Kuwaitis on how to rebuild their country.

Factors in Victory

The commander of Britain’s 4th Armored Brigade said Friday that the key to the allies’ victory was the speed with which they were able to attack and the fact that they could move and fire during the night.

Speaking to British television from inside his tank--which itself had destroyed Iraqi tanks--Brig. Chris Hammerbeck said:

“The speed at which we were able to hit (the enemy) was vital. But I think even more fundamental than that . . . was the fact that we were able to attack in the pouring rain and at night in pitch black. All of a sudden, all the tanks, all the armored personnel carriers, all the guns and all the men on the first objective just burst into flames.

“Thereafter, those who were waiting there and further down range found that a most tremendous disincentive to fight on.”

Hammerbeck said that his brigade captured two Iraqi division commanders, with the rank of major general, and six brigade commanders, along with many lower-ranking officers.

Times staff writers William Tuohy in London and Melissa Healy in Washington contributed to this report.