Iraqi Troops Holing Up in Empty Homes : Kuwait: Stragglers from the war are taking refuge in a suburb of the capital. But they are not a serious threat, the U.S. says.

Not every enemy soldier fled north in February when coalition forces chased Saddam Hussein’s army back to Iraq.

Dozens of Iraqi stragglers, perhaps hundreds, have shed their uniforms and taken up residence in vacant homes here in this suburb of Kuwait city, authorities said Friday.

Between 30 and 35 Iraqi soldiers posing as stateless Arabs have already been rooted out, according to Kuwaiti army intelligence officers.

Many of the soldiers are believed to be survivors of the Feb. 26 “convoy of death,” the hundreds of tanks and other vehicles trapped and destroyed by U.S. warplanes on nearby Jahra Road, which leads north to Baghdad.

“Every day we catch one,” said Capt. Bader Fuhaid of the Kuwaiti army. “People come to us and tell us where they are.”

Fuhaid said none of the Iraqis were armed, and none offered resistance when encountered.

The Kuwaiti army, he said, is not actively looking for former Iraqi soldiers but is more than willing to round them up when they are pointed out by townspeople or others. He estimated that there may be “many hundreds” of Iraqis who remain in hiding in Jahra and the surrounding desert.

A spokesman at the U.S. Army’s regional headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, said that while commanders remain concerned about the security of American forces stationed in Kuwait, they do not consider Iraqi troops who remained behind the lines to be a serious threat.

“We’ve had some discussions on this,” said Lt. Col. Charles Willey, “but this is the first I’ve heard of a specific location” in which stragglers have been concentrated.

Once a desert oasis and crossroads for camel trading, Jahra has evolved as a sizable community, second only in population to Kuwait city, 20 miles to the east. Historically, part of its population has been Iraqi, which some authorities believe has made it particularly attractive to enemy soldiers disinclined to return home.

Before the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait in August, there were an estimated 400,000 people living in Jahra. Today, there are about half that.

Lifelong resident Talal Ayyar, 31, a member of the National Council, Kuwait’s legislature, said that with so many empty houses in the city, the Iraqis have had little difficulty finding places to hide.

It is when they have gone outside or been seen by local residents that most have been caught, Ayyar said. There is no foolproof way to distinguish between Iraqis and Kuwaitis, but Arabs in the region can normally tell the difference between the respective accents.

According to authorities, some Iraqis when confronted have attempted to pass themselves off as Middle Easterners who claim no citizenship, while others have claimed Kuwaiti citizenship using stolen and forged passports.

“But we are a small country,” Ayyar said. “We are like a big family. Everybody knows the other. For Iraqis, when they are caught, I am not sorry because they came to my country and they kill our people and take everything from the country.”

Kuwaiti army officers said the Iraqis, when discovered, are treated no different from enemy deserters who turn themselves in at allied checkpoints along the Kuwaiti border or inside occupied Iraq.

They are stripped of their weapons, if any, then transported to prison camps in Saudi Arabia for eventual repatriation to Iraq.

The number of prisoners of war held by Kuwait could not be immediately learned Friday.

As of Thursday, there were 31,923 Iraqi soldiers in U.S. custody. More than 28,000 others have been transferred to Saudi Arabia for processing.

Nearly 10,000 former prisoners of war have been returned to Iraq, according to U.S. Army figures.