Iraq Women and Children Massacred : Persian Gulf: Ragged refugees describe murders of families and suspected resistance members. U.S. medics treat wounded young people.

Saddam Hussein’s troops have massacred Iraqi women and children and shelled civilian neighborhoods and are rounding up and executing males over age 15 in the wake of a failed rebellion in southern Iraq, terrified refugees said Monday.

Thousands of ragged refugees flooded roads near here, 120 miles northwest of Iraq’s border with Kuwait, and swamped U.S. military checkpoints, begging to be given political asylum or to be taken as prisoners of war to escape the wave of terror.

Working from busy field hospitals, U.S. medics have treated hundreds of Iraqi civilians for burns and shrapnel wounds, and they said traumatized children were appearing with bullet wounds and deep lacerations on their legs and backs.

“They look like they’ve been beaten with barbed wire,” said Daryl Osby, 22, a U.S. Army medic at Checkpoint X-Ray.

Hundreds of refugees crowded into a former workers’ complex here, complaining that typhoid and malaria are sweeping the area. They pleaded for food, water and help from the International Red Cross or the U.S. Army.

“All of Saddam’s bravado is being used against his own people,” said one man. “Will no one kill Saddam?”

“Please help us,” one woman pleaded. “Let this be an appeal from families that are starving.”

In one of the first looks deep into war-ravaged southern Iraq, a Times correspondent drove Monday from the Kuwaiti border to near the limit of the U.S.-held zone, close to the Euphrates River and about 20 miles southeast of the strategic city of Nasiriyah.

The six-lane Highway 1 is littered with the remains of scores of burned-out trucks and tanks, and several bridges are bombed out. Herds of camels and donkeys graze near tomato farms, and unseasonable rain has brought surprising patches of green to the windswept desert. Curiously, clusters of roadside picnic tables are mostly untouched.

But refugees along the way told tales of horror focusing on the collapse of the Shiite Muslim-led revolt during the last week. They spoke of the decapitation of children, the machine-gunning of families and the strafing of women by helicopter gunships.

In Najaf, a Shiite holy city that was a stronghold of the resistance, troops from the Iraqi Republican Guard’s 23rd Brigade used 106-millimeter artillery, surface-to-surface rockets and phosphorus explosives against suspected rebel homes and families, one group of 63 refugees said.

Ala Hadi Zazem wept as he told of finding his wife and three children dead after Iraqi troops fired shells into his home in Najaf.

“I found my son, Raad, 3 years old, without a head,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “I couldn’t stand it any longer.”

Ala Mohammed, 30, an Iraqi army deserter, said families of suspected resistance members were taken from their homes, “lined against the wall” and shot. He said he found 12 nursing infants, abandoned after their parents had been killed.

“They took the wounded out of the hospital, them and the doctors treating them, and they shot them,” he said. “This we saw with our own eyes.”

Jawad Mohammed, 28, another deserter, said many families who had fled early fighting had returned to Najaf after the army took control, only to find death squads roaming the streets.

“They have executed my family,” he said, his voice cracking. “My wife and three children are no more.”

Mohammed said he saw a woman carrying her daughter, running down the street. “They hit her with a rocket and cut her in two,” he said.

Several refugees said that President Hussein’s troops had used some form of chemical gas against civilians in Najaf.

“They were blinded, their whole body was shaking and shivering,” said Mohammed Abdul Zahra, 31, a teacher. “This is the ugliest of crimes.”

Similar atrocities were reported in the Euphrates River city of Nasiriyah and the nearby town of Suq ash Shuyukh. Republican Guard units advancing from Baghdad recaptured both cities two days ago, using heavy artillery and helicopter gunships, refugees said.

Abdul Zazem Talem, 25, said troops arriving in Nasiriyah killed captured resistance fighters in a particularly gruesome fashion--by draining their blood to give to wounded Republican Guard soldiers.

“They executed children,” he said. “They brought families out and executed them in front of their homes.”

One deserter, Ibrahim Mehdi Ibrahim, 32, admitted participating in the army’s battle to regain Qadissiyah, south of Najaf.

“In the beginning, we shelled families inside the town with 130-millimeter artillery,” he said after seeking asylum at a U.S. checkpoint. “And then helicopter gunships started hitting people. . . . The women ran to the fields, and helicopters followed them. The helicopters started harvesting them.”

After taking control, he said, special Iraqi military security forces went to homes and rounded up any males over age 15. He said groups of 20 to 30 were being shot at a time, then buried in mass graves. Their homes were then dynamited, he said.

Ibrahim said he and several friends deserted to the resistance when he found that his own mother and little brother had been killed as well.

“We ran away,” he said. “We told ourselves we don’t want to do this.”

In Suq ash Shuyukh, one woman said, families are leaving “corpses of their children” on garbage heaps where they were dumped after execution, rather than risk being identified as resistance families.

“Saddam has committed a terrific massacre,” said Hamid Jassim, 21. “Everyone over 15 is threatened with execution.”

Some of the refugees came from as far as northern Iraq, where a separate rebellion of Kurdish nationalists is still under way. One of them, Tamer Woussef, a deserter from Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, said his father and brother also had been killed.

“There are hidden crimes that will make your hair turn gray,” he said. “Thousands of young men of Iraq have been killed.”

Hundreds of other young Iraqi men flocked to U.S. military checkpoints Monday, pleading to be taken as prisoners of war. Policy appeared to vary from post to post, however, with some U.S. officers refusing all prisoners, others taking only those in uniform and still others accepting anyone who asked.

At a checkpoint on the dirt road to Suq ash Shuyukh, for example, 1st Lt. Geoff Farrell, 27, of Holliston, Mass., said he was under new orders to disarm all Iraqis but to take them prisoner only if they acted in a threatening manner. His troops took 350 prisoners in the last four days.

“They all want a free ride to Saudi Arabia,” he said, as about 50 Iraqi men, many in brown military berets and uniforms, crowded round to offer themselves up.

“Once they’re EPWs (enemy prisoners of war), we’re responsible for feeding them and taking care of them,” he said. “If we started, there’d be no end to it.”

Sgt. James Manglona, 36, of Guam, said many feared execution if they returned home. “Everybody wants out,” he said. “Because if they go back, they’re deserters. They want to be a POW and get better treatment.”

At another checkpoint, back on Highway 1, Lt. Chris Lestocki, 25, of Allentown, Pa., said many Iraqi men now are “faking it” to get POW status.

“As soon as we started taking the first POWs, they started digging their old uniforms out and showing up,” he said, as another dump truck full of would-be prisoners rumbled up.

Elsewhere, several heavily guarded U.S. truck convoys ferried hundreds of Iraqi POWs south to processing camps in Saudi Arabia. One convoy had six trucks and about 300 prisoners. Another two trucks held 104 Iraqis.

“My platoon took over 100 POWs today,” said Lt. Paul R. Walter, 25, of Miller Place, N.Y., head of Checkpoint X-Ray, near the border town of Safwan. “If they’ve got military IDs, we’ll take ‘em.”

Walter said another 400 refugees were being fed and sheltered at a nearby desert camp after asking for political asylum. U.S. State Department officials were expected to visit the two-day-old camp today, he said.

Thousands of others simply tried to flee toward Kuwait. At Checkpoint Zulu, U.S. soldiers counted 937 people who passed in four hours, their destinations unknown.

“They all say Saddam just can’t wait for us (Americans) to get out of here, so he can come down and finish the job,” said Staff Sgt. Kendall Sorensen, 41, an Arabic-speaking Utah National Guardsman. “And there’s not one who doesn’t think we should go up there and take him out.”

Many of the refugees had walked for five days and were barefoot or in tattered sneakers or sandals. Others were crammed aboard overloaded buses, trucks and cars.

One Toyota SR5 pickup truck somehow was packed with 35 refugees. A bus held more than 200. One dump truck was so full that men hung from the side and perched precariously on the hood. About 25 men clung to the top of a water tanker truck that towed a jeep filled with women and children.

“We are the resistance,” said one of the women, Najat Abdul Razzah, who traveled with her seven children. “We are running away.”

Others weren’t so lucky.

At least 75 civilians were taken to a U.S. medics’ post in a muddy field outside Suq ash Shuyukh. One young girl had a fractured skull and was wounded with shrapnel from an exploding grenade. The back of a 2-year-old was peppered with shrapnel.

“I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff in Detroit,” said Spec. Clarence Mackall, 25. “But I’ve got a 2-year-old, and this stuff really hurts me.”

Many of the U.S. soldiers said they were troubled and confused over their role in Iraq, awaiting a formal cease-fire and withdrawal but forced to stand by while Hussein apparently slaughters his own people.

“I don’t understand this damn war, I really don’t,” said Sgt. 1st Class Keven Pfister, 31, of Gulliver, Mich. “First we’re fighting them. Then we’re helping them. Now, we’re like a referee, caught in somebody else’s civil war.”

As night fell, hundreds of refugees were camped along the road or in the desert. A brilliant array of stars glittered overhead, as burning oil wells cast a grisly orange glow on the horizon. U.S. troops burned tires around their checkpoints and waited for the nightly light show of tracer bullets and artillery farther north, signs of distant death and destruction.

“Saddam has destroyed Iraq,” said one bearded refugee, clutching a reporter’s sleeve as the car drove off. “By God, he has destroyed Iraq.”