Dignity of Ancient City of Ur Is Marred by Indignity of War : Iraq: Beside the road that leads to the biblical home of Abraham are the remains of blasted Iraqi jet fighters.

The mud-brick ruins of this 6,000-year-old city, cited in the Old Testament and known as one of the oldest settlements in history, are surrounded by the misery and death of modern war.

Beside the road that leads to the ancient home of Abraham, father of the Hebrew nation, are the blasted carcasses of at least 28 top-of-the-line, Soviet-built Iraqi jet fighters.

Black smoke pours from the embattled city of Nasiriyah nearby. Only a mile or so away are the bombed-out hardened shelters, gutted hangars and cratered runways of the Talil air base, one of Iraq’s largest airfields and a key target for U.S. and British bombers during the six-week air war.

At least one bomb landed in the old city, however, digging a deep crater about 20 yards southeast of the seven-story, brick-faced ceremonial mound known as the ziggurat and spraying its reconstructed walls with about two dozen small pieces of shrapnel.

“Death is the same everywhere,” shrugged Naif Sutan, 54, a guide to Ur like his father before him. “I stayed throughout the war. I didn’t leave for one hour.”

Little else apparently disturbed the ancient Sumerian city, which was ruled for a time by the Babylonians, was cited in Genesis 11:28-31 and has been a treasure trove for archeologists since its initial excavation in 1922-34. Scholars had warned that the bombing could destroy priceless artifacts.

Untouched, however, are the royal burial chambers, the clay cisterns and wells, the “judgment seat” used as a court and the cuneiform writing and human bones in the sun-baked red bricks of the once-great city.

“We went to great lengths to avoid (bombing) it,” said U.S. Army Maj. Douglas Macgregor, 38. “At one point, they even parked the MIGs next to the ruins, knowing we wouldn’t attack it.”

But when the Iraqi jets--including Soviet-built MIG-25s, MIG-23s, SU-22s and a Frogfoot attack jet--were moved to sandy revetments dug beside the two-lane entrance road, each was destroyed by laser-guided bombs that barely touched the road.

One jet was flipped over by the blast, while most others were burned to skeletons of scorched metal. Tail fins were blown off, wings were in pieces and cockpits were incinerated.

The only plane that apparently survived was a mock-up jet, painted in camouflage and mounted on three concrete pylons near a destroyed brick and tile portrait of Saddam Hussein that marks the entrance to the sprawling air base.

“It’s a testimony to precision bombing,” Macgregor said.

A testimony to Hussein’s grim war against his own people was visible on the highway and dirt roads near here, inside American-held territory about 140 miles northwest of the Kuwaiti border.

Several thousand bedraggled refugees filled cars and buses, trying to flee shelling in nearby Samawah and telling of massacres of civilians elsewhere in southern Iraq.

Deserting Iraqi soldiers told U.S. military interpreters at several checkpoints that Hussein is encouraging the bloodbath by offering a cash bonus to his shock troops to kill families of Shiite Muslim insurgents who launched a rebellion against Hussein’s regime a month ago, following his military defeat at the hands of a U.S.-led coalition.

“The POWs said they get 250 dinars to kill babies and women and up to 5,000 dinars for adult males,” said Capt. Rhett Scott, 28, at Checkpoint 5 Alfa, southwest of Nasiriyah and the farthest U.S. post on the main road west to Baghdad. “They can kill up to 100 a day. That’s the limit.”

A 30-year-old surgeon from Hillah said Republican Guard troops last week executed 15 doctors from the town’s Jamhouri Hospital and then deliberately shelled the 2,000-bed facility while 4,000 patients and families were crammed inside.

“It was the only real operating hospital left in the south,” said the doctor, who was educated in Baghdad and Frankfurt.

Another doctor told U.S. troops he saw his family executed. “His wife, two children and his brother were thrown out of a helicopter for his opposition to Saddam Hussein,” Macgregor said.

Refugees from Najaf, a city holy to Shiites, said helicopters with loudspeakers circled the town several days ago, ordering all residents to walk northward toward Karbala or face execution.

Once on the road, however, the refugees said, tanks suddenly turned on the thousands of travelers and began firing, mowing down women and children.

“They were led by tanks from back and front, and suddenly shot down,” said one distraught Iraqi government worker. “I saw it with my eyes, and God is a witness to what I say.”

Another refugee from Najaf blamed President Bush, saying the United States, instead of aiding the resistance fighters, has left them defenseless against Hussein’s cruelty.

At least 2,000 refugees passed through U.S. lines during the day, and more than 300 POWs were trucked south to processing camps in Saudi Arabia. Hundreds more were camped on the road by nightfall.

“It’s building up every day,” said Pfc. James Jacobson, 20, at Checkpoint Zulu. “It’s been going up and up and up.”

The sad stream of refugees included a dump truck with 25 people that clattered down the road on three tires and one rim. A Toyota drove by with 15 people and no windshield.

An overstuffed car carried a man, woman and two children in the open trunk. The next car had six people sitting in the trunk and two perched amid mattresses and bags on the roof.

Another car arrived with one man wounded in the head, and another injured in the left foot. U.S. troops loaded them in a truck headed for an emergency aid station.

Staff Sgt. Orville Higgins, 31, said seven children, the oldest only 9, had arrived earlier with burns on their faces and bodies. “They look like napalm burns,” he said, shaking his head.

Some Iraqi soldiers desperately insisted that they had to report to their units in Basra, about 40 miles north of Kuwait, by Monday or their families will be executed. U.S. troops refuse to let soldiers pass except as POWs, however.

“Once we pull out of here, large numbers of people undoubtedly will be killed,” Macgregor said.

The tales of death and destruction contrasted sharply with the quiet dignity and grace of the ancient ruins of Ur, known in the Old Testament as Ur of the Chaldees.

It was a cultured Euphrates River port then, in 4000 BC, although the river has now moved 10 miles north. It was also home to seven dynasties, including King Ur-Nammu, who promulgated an early code of laws.

It was here, according to Genesis, that Abram, later to become Abraham, married Sarah and set out with his father, Terah, and nephew, Lot, for the land of Canaan.

The history was recounted in part Wednesday by Capt. James White, 39, a U.S. Army chaplain from Longview, Tex., who suddenly arrived to give a 45-minute tour to an unusual group of tourists: about 75 camera-clicking, rifle-toting soldiers from the Army’s 2nd Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

White began the biblical tale in classic military parlance.

“All right, listen up, lemme tell you the story,” he shouted at the helmet-clad soldiers tromping around the earthen-red ruins in combat boots. “What this deal is. . . . “

He led them to the restored remains of the hall of justice, where accused were judged by the king and a group of counselors. The guilty went out one door, the innocent the other.

“Remember the words of Jesus?” White asked. “You separate some on the right, some on the left. It was the same thing here. It was the Judgment Seat of that day and time.”

Next was the foundations of the palace, with a throne room, bedrooms and what White described as the “harem for the king’s wives.”

The soldiers murmured loudly in appreciation. “Hoowah! Hoowah!” several exclaimed, giving this war’s odd but ubiquitous enunciation of approval.

The ancient bathroom, White pointed out, “is like the one you’re using right now--just a hole in the ground.”

Then came the burial pit. Commoners were buried “with everything--rings, gold, watches, everything,” he said, momentarily confusing his centuries.

“The deeper you dig, the older the gold,” he added. “Don’t get any ideas. It’s illegal.”

Excavation of the royal tomb showed that the king was buried with his wife and servants, White said. “I’m glad I’m a Christian, I can tell you,” he said, peering into the deep brick-lined pit.

Another cluster had bone fragments, apparently those of buried noblemen, in the walls, and bricks with the faint cuneiform etching of ancient Sumerian.

Half-buried clay pots showed a sophisticated system for filtering and collecting water. “Jesus talks about Christian life as a well within us, we can draw from to get strength,” White said. “Now, you can understand why.”

Later, walking back to the ziggurat mound, White said he intends to hold a sunrise Easter service in Ur this Sunday. Jewish soldiers wishing to celebrate Passover, which starts Friday, will be flown to Saudi Arabia for a seder with the only U.S. military rabbi currently in the region.

White said the tour, his seventh of the day, “opened doors spiritually” for soldiers who have spent months in the lonely desert, facing death far from their families.

Many have found God, he said, or “re-prioritized” their lives to consider religious values. Many, he said, were struck by the similarities of modern war and the role of sacrifice and ritual death in the ancient world.

“Just being here and going through a war has been spiritually uplifting for a lot of these guys,” White added cheerfully.