6 Americans Among First 10 POWs Freed : Prisoners: Group includes a U.S. female soldier. Allies plan to reciprocate by releasing 300 Iraqis.

Six American prisoners of war and four others from Britain and Italy were freed Monday by the Iraqi government, reaching Jordan after a seven-hour Red Cross road convoy from Baghdad.

The 10 captured soldiers and pilots included Melissa Rathbun-Nealy, a 20-year-old U.S. Army specialist from Newaygo, Mich., who had been listed as missing since she and Specialist David Lockett, 23, of Ft. Bliss, Tex., disappeared on the Saudi-Kuwaiti border Jan. 30. Lockett was also released.

After reaching the Jordanian border, the former captives were flown by helicopter to a military airport near Amman, and from there they were flown to the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf for medical examinations and debriefing. The Americans will be returned to their families “as soon as humanly possible,” a Pentagon spokesman said.

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, U.S. military officials announced plans to free 300 Iraqi prisoners today in response to Baghdad’s release of the 10. Early today, however, both Saudi and American officials were saying the release may be delayed a few days.

In other developments:

* Two of the three British prisoners of war released Monday may have been members of a top-secret Special Air Service regiment that had operated behind Iraqi lines for weeks, according to reports in London.

* Under the terms of the cease-fire accepted by Iraqi military leaders Sunday, a broad swath of Iraq will continue to be occupied by allied troops until Iraq has met all of its commitments, the Pentagon said.

* Iraq protested to the United Nations that helicopter-borne U.S. troops landed on the main highway to Jordan over the weekend and that American jets have terrorized residents of several Iraqi cities.

* Civilians were apparently among the victims of what may have been last large-scale battlefield encounter of the Gulf War, it was reported Monday.

The Ex-POWs

Iraqi authorities turned the former prisoners over to the International Red Cross in Baghdad on Monday morning. Andreas Wigger, the Swiss-administered Red Cross’ chief official in Iraq, termed the releases a “goodwill gesture.” A Red Cross doctor in the Iraqi capital said all 10 were in good health.

On arrival at the Jordanian border post at Ruweished, the former captives were taken by helicopter to a military airport outside Amman. Declining to speak to reporters, they immediately boarded a plane for the Persian Gulf island sheikdom of Bahrain, where they arrived early today. The Americans and Italian boarded the U.S. Navy medical ship Mercy for medical evaluation. British officials took the three Britons to a separate facility.

“We understood this will be the beginning of a long process to liberate all the POWs, the Iraqis and the allies,” Wigger told reporters in Baghdad. “The first batch of allied prisoners of war was only made as a goodwill gesture by the Iraqis, and they have to work out plans for repatriation of the rest of them.”

In New York, CBS Radio News quoted Iraq’s United Nations ambassador, Abdul Amir Anbari, as saying all remaining allied prisoners of war would be freed at 10 a.m. Baghdad time today. No details were given, and Anbari could not immediately be reached for confirmation.

Freedom for the 10 came the day after allied and Iraqi generals met at the Safwan Airfield in allied-occupied Iraqi territory to settle terms for ending the war. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf, said the Iraqi side agreed to all allied demands, and an exchange of prisoners was high on the list.

According to a U.S. spokesman in Riyadh, 38 American servicemen were listed as missing when shooting stopped last week, and nine of them were known to have been taken prisoner.

Red Cross officials in Baghdad listed the other freed American POWs as Lt. Jeffrey N. Zaun, 28, of Cherry Hill, N.J., a navigator-bombardier on a Navy A-6 Intruder, whose plane was shot down over Iraq on the first day of the war; Lt. Robert Wetzel, 30, of Virginia Beach, Va., and Lt. Lawrence R. Slade, 26, also of Virginia Beach, both Navy fliers; and Air Force Maj. Thomas E. Griffith, 34, of Goldsboro, N.C.

The three Britons were listed as Malcolm MacGowan, John Peters and Ian Pring. The Italian is Capt. Maurizio Cocciolone, a pilot.

Zaun, Peters and Cocciolone were among the allied POWs displayed on Baghdad television in the first days of the conflict, a crude propaganda show that backfired on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, hardening American popular support for the war. At the time, some of the men, Zaun in particular, bore facial injuries.

In Baghdad, Wigger of the Red Cross said his agency had not seen any of the other allied prisoners believed held in Iraq.

Those released Monday were wearing yellow jumpsuits with patches marked “PW” on their chests and backs when Iraqi authorities turned them over to the Red Cross. They were given cheeseburgers, Swiss chocolates and soft drinks by the Red Cross and posed briefly for press photos at the Novotel Hotel in downtown Baghdad, but made no statements to reporters.

Rathbun-Nealy smiled when reporters told her that her picture had been on the cover of Paris-Match magazine.

Three hours after their release, and following a brief checkup by a Red Cross doctor, the 10 former captives left for Jordan in a three-vehicle caravan, traveling along the Baghdad-Amman highway, which was heavily bombed during the air war.

In television coverage of their transfer to a military aircraft at the Jordanian air base for the flight to Bahrain, they smiled and appeared fit.

The Iraqi POWs

In announcing plans Monday to free 300 Iraqis, the Americans gave no details on the method or location of the release. And it soon developed that there may be problems in carrying out the release on schedule.

Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said in Washington on Monday that the release may be put off a few days. In Riyadh early today, American military officials said Saudi officials had reported ‘technical” hitches that might delay the release of the 300 Iraqis. But the officials said they still believed that the release would take place.

The Saudis, who originally seemed surprised when told that the Americans had announced the release of 300 prisoners, could not be reached for further comment.

A spokesman for the Red Cross, which is overseeing the prisoner exchange, said details of the scheduled release were still far from being finalized and were hampered by poor communications with Baghdad.

“The numbers are in question, the routing is in question. . . . Every detail involved in the repatriation is pending,” said Arnold Luethold, head of the Red Cross delegation in Riyadh.

Allied forces hold more than 63,000 Iraqi prisoners in camps scattered throughout northern Saudi Arabia, where they were taken after surrendering or being captured.

Many were in poor health, underfed and poorly clothed, and many have told their captors that they do not want to return to Iraq. About 800 are being treated for wounds and disease, and two died of malnutrition while in allied custody.

“Many do not want to return,” said Lt. Col. Mohammed Rashid of the Saudi air force, a spokesman for the Joint Arab Forces. “It’s a problem.”

Luethold of the Red Cross said he is confident that the Iraqis chosen to be among the 300 to be released want to go home.

“We make every effort to be sure no one is boarding an airplane . . . unless they have expressed their desire to do so, of their own free will,” Luethold said.

The Saudi government, meanwhile, is grappling with the question of what to do with the remainder of the Iraqi prisoners.

Rashid said those Iraqis who indicate that they do not want to go back to Iraq are being asked where they would like to live. It has not been decided what will be done with those who want to remain in Saudi Arabia, a wealthy kingdom that imports most of its labor force from Third World countries but that would be hard pressed to absorb tens of thousands of impoverished Iraqis.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia could reap certain propaganda value from the mass refusal of Iraqi prisoners to return to life under Hussein.

“Many say they will not go back until Saddam is gone,” Rashid said.

The Britons

Of the three Britons released Monday, one of them--Flight Lt. Peters--had been listed by the British government as missing soon after his Tornado aircraft was shot down. But the other two--MacGowan and Pring--had never been listed as either missing or captured.

Reports circulated in London on Monday that the two men had been attached to the Special Air Services, Britain’s equivalent of the U.S. Special Forces, and that they had been captured while on a secret mission in Iraq.

British sources said friends of Pring in Hereford, the home base of a crack Special Air Services regiment, said he was a member of the SAS.

The SAS, which draws its members from other British regiments, performs counterterrorist functions in peacetime. In wartime, its members often operate behind enemy lines.

The SAS teams, along with the U.S. Green Berets and other special-warfare units, acted as the allies’ forward eyes and ears inside Iraq before and during the massive assault to liberate Kuwait.

The special units were singled out for credit by Gen. Schwarzkopf, who revealed last week that they had been on deep reconnaissance missions, passing back critical information about Iraqi positions.

The Occupation

The Pentagon confirmed Monday that Iraq has turned over information on the location of land and sea mines, as demanded by the allies.

But even with the information, Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly told reporters, the mine-clearing operation will be difficult and costly.

Kelly, director of operations for the Joints Chiefs of Staff, also said that under terms of the cease-fire accepted by Iraqi military leaders Sunday, a broad swath of Iraq will be occupied by allied troops until Iraq has met all of the cease-fire terms.

In an effort to reduce the prospects for conflict between the two forces, the allies and Iraqis agreed that neither force will come within six kilometers (about 3.7 miles) of a line marking the occupied zone, he said.

Kelly said that the Iraqis will not be able to operate aircraft within six kilometers of that line, and they will be allowed to operate helicopters only for administrative flights in the area and with prior coordination.

Iraqi Protest

Baghdad Radio reported that Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz complained to the United Nations that helicopter-borne American troops landed 100 miles away from Baghdad on the Baghdad-to-Jordan highway over the weekend.

In a letter of complaint to the Security Council, Aziz said six helicopters were involved in the landing Saturday. He gave no other details. He did not say what the troops did or how long they stayed.

Fighting in the six-week Gulf War halted Thursday, and cease-fire terms were agreed to Sunday in talks between Iraqi and allied generals at Safwan Airfield in allied-occupied southern Iraq.

Aziz also complained that U.S. jets broke the sound barrier over Baghdad and other cities Monday, “terrorizing” the public with the noise.

“These actions contradict the agreement in Safwan and constitute sheer unjustified provocation,” he said, asking the Security Council to put a stop to them.

There was no immediate response to Aziz’s charges from the U.S. military, but American officers in occupied Iraq said recently that radar surveillance craft and jet fighters will continue to fly Iraq’s skies around the clock until a formal cease-fire takes effect. The allies also have said that during ground fighting last week, helicopter-borne U.S. troops in southern Iraq were within 150 miles of Baghdad.

Civilian Dead?

The report of the possibility of civilian deaths, including those of children, came as a footnote to a two-hour weekend battle between American and Iraqi tanks in southeastern Iraq.

Elements of the U.S. Army’s 24th Mechanized Infantry Division responded to enemy fire from Iraqi Republican Guards about 20 miles west of Basra in rural southeastern Iraq. Army officers said they believe that the Iraqi troops had not received word of the Thursday morning cease-fire.

More than 150 Iraqi tanks are believed to have been destroyed in the battle, along with 350 trucks. The Army said there were no American casualties.

A journalist near the scene has now added to the account, reporting, “Some Iraqi civilians were caught in the cross-fire.”

In one case, a projectile hit a truck, killing its civilian driver and two children nearby, the journalist said. Cries of anguish could be heard from survivors.

Army medics plunged into the crowd of about 30 civilians, tending to the wounded and trying to calm others.

Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson in Riyadh, William Tuohy in London, Melissa Healy in Washington and John Balzar in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.

FREED POWS

The first of the allied prisoners released Monday included: * Army Specialist Melissa Rathbun-Nealy, of Newaygo, Mich., the only woman soldier reported missing. She and Specialist David Lockett of Ft. Bliss, Tex., had been listed as missing.

* Navy Lt. Jeffrey N. Zaun of Cherry Hill, N.J., a navigator-bombardier whose A-6 Intruder went down on Jan. 17, the first day of the war.

* Navy Lt. Robert Wetzel of Virginia Beach, Va. Wetzel had been listed as missing.

* Navy Lt. Lawrence R. Slade, also of Virginia Beach.

* Air Force Maj. Thomas E. Griffith of Goldsboro, N.C.

* From Britain, Flight Lt. John Peters, Malcolm MacGowan and Ian Pring.

* From Italy, Capt. Maurizio Cocciolone.