Hungry, Exhausted Kurds Cross Frontier Into Iran : Mideast: But they are the lucky ones: Behind them thousands of others are still subject to military attack.

Bundled against the harsh wind, they came by the thousands Friday--exhausted, dispirited, hungry, thirsty, stoic Kurds trudging on foot and in taxis, trucks and farm tractors across this snow-shouldered, mile-high pass toward the safety of Iran.

With the Iranian frontier open to receive hundreds of thousands of Kurds fleeing death at the hands of the Iraqi military, the scene Friday was one of harrowing human intensity: old men limping on rough canes, women carrying possessions on their heads and infants in their arms, barefoot daughters lugging younger brothers and sisters on their backs, baggy-trousered men slithering in the mud created by the runoff from the massive snowpack.

There was no class distinction among the refugees: Taxi drivers competed for space and food with physicians and engineers, as well as teachers and tribal farmers.

The line of Kurds trying to escape Saddam Hussein’s vengeful troops stretched into the misty distance down from this pass over the Zagros Mountains marking the border.

Above the towering white peaks, the sky played tricks, changing from a cerulean blue to an angry dark gray, then loosing showerlets of snow on the struggling Kurds.

The chaos here exceeded even that on the Iraqi-Turkish border--the other scene of Kurdish desperation--as Iranian soldiers did their best to to provide food, water and blankets, their trucks moving up the mountains against the surge of refugees heading the other way.

Iranian officials and relief experts called the unexpected influx a “catastrophic disaster.”

But despite their plight, these Kurds are the lucky ones. They are now within reach of food, shelter and possibly even medical care.

Behind them, stretching for miles, was the long line of fellow Kurds still subject to harassment by Iraqi gunfire, as well as disease and death on the high mountain road.

“You can see many graves on the side of the road,” said Korshad Ahmad, an engineer from Kirkuk in northern Iraq, who said he was 50 years old but whose grizzled face looks 65.

His plight was typical of many who have spent up to two weeks to reach safety at this frontier.

The night before, many of them had huddled under makeshift tents of plastic sheeting, waiting for friends and relatives so they could continue into Iran as a group.

Wearing a white scarf against the blustery weather, Ahmad, the father of seven, said: “We lost everything we had--houses, cars, shops. Everything in one hour.”

He expressed the grievances of many Kurds as he declared: “We don’t want Saddam Hussein. We don’t want to see his face. We don’t want to see Arab faces--any of them.”

As for President Bush, the Kurdish refugee said: “He left us alone. He pushed us into this revolution, but he hasn’t helped us.

“He did everything for Kuwait and then left us all alone.”

Another head of a family, Rostan Moulak from Irbil, wearing a blue parka, checkered scarf and baggy black pants, said heatedly:

“Many children died along this road. We need doctors, medicine and food.”

The Iraqis, Moulak said, attacked his people with helicopters, bombs and incendiary phosphorus shells.

“We need help from President Bush, but there is no help from the U.S.--no medicine, no doctors.

“And there is no milk for children. They have diarrhea and stomach trouble from drinking water made from the snow.”

As he spoke, Iranian troops were sending truck after truck up the mountain pass to pick up the refugees and carry them down to lower, more hospitable terrain.

Atop the pass at the Iran-Iraq border--marked only by a small sign--the Iranian army set up water tankers for the refugees. Truck-borne soldiers threw out yellow apples as they drove by the long lines, and men, women and children scrambled to catch them.

But the traffic moving along the rutted, muddy, two-lane road only inched along and was occasionally seized in gridlock.

One huge bus tried to turn around to pick up passengers but slid into a ditch and spun across the road, blocking it. Disorganized soldiers failed to get it out of the way until a tall, smartly dressed Iranian army colonel arrived, took charge and untangled the traffic.

At the pass, women and children washed apples in the mountain freshets and waded into the stream, lifting their colorful Kurdish tribal dresses to wash the mud from feet and skirts.

A girl helped her father wrap himself in his traditional cummerbund, the man swirling and pirouetting like a dancer.

A truck rolled by with a baby cradle tied to one fender.

Tales of Iraqi brutality were widespread. One young father, Yehyah Ibrahim, his bearded face a mask of sorrow, told of what the Iraqi soldiers did to his family in Irbil.

When troops appeared near his home, Ibrahim said, he sneaked out the back door so that they would not find a young Kurdish man in the house--a certain murder target.

From a distance in the woods, he saw the soldiers ransack his place, and he thought he could see them assaulting his four young children.

When the soldiers had gone, he returned--and found the throats of all four children cut.

Other Kurdish refugees kept referring to the reported 20,000 young Kurdish males who were rounded up and packed off toward a prisoner camp at Tikrit, the hometown of Hussein, a place from which Kurds fear their young folk will not return.

Many of the orange- and cream-colored Iraqi taxis arrived at the pass, one driven by Sirwan Moulout, who managed to pack eight members of his family into the small vehicle with blankets and firewood on the roof rack. He said he had been driving from Kirkuk for two weeks to get to the pass, with a several-day delay at the Iraqi side of the border.

He said he and many others listened to the radio for news that the United States or the United Nations had intervened to support the Kurds--to no avail.

As his taxi inched by, other families were carrying empty jerrycans. Some sought water, but others were looking for gasoline, since many of the vehicles in the enormous procession had run out of gas and were being towed by other trucks and cars.

Some of the refugees said they probably could make better time on foot but they would never consider leaving their vehicle--not only their most precious possession but also, for many of them, a shelter for whole families.

Many of those families making their way down the mountain stopped at meadows along the way and spread plastic sheets by the side of streams--almost a picnic scene, were it not for the grim circumstances.

The first major stop on the Iranian side is Piramshar, a sleepy frontier town of 32,000 people that has been inundated by refugees.

Officials said there are about 150,000 Kurdish refugees in and around the town, crowding the sidewalks and spilling over into the street itself.

And while they are safe, they nevertheless grumble about their plight and the high prices they must pay for most items of necessity; the Iraqi dinar is not worth much here.

The Kurds will be sent to several emergency refugee camps in various cities in Iranian Kurdistan, in the northwest of the country, a region that includes the cities of Sardasht, Oshniviyeh, Khvoy, Salmas, Mahabad and Orumiyeh.