Refugees
Describe Air Raid Horrors;
Iraqi Residential
Areas Feel Impact
By Nora Boustany
Washington Post
Foreign Service
Monday, January
21, 1991; Page A01
RUWEISHED, Jordan,
Jan. 20—Refugees arriving at
this Jordanian
border post today spoke of civilian
casualties,
of the terror of bombs landing near and -- in some cases --
hitting residential
areas of Baghdad and Mosul, and of cars loaded with
coffins at the
southern port city of Basra.
Fleeing overland
from Iraq and Kuwait, the Palestinian and Lebanese
refugees described
a creeping fear of death among Iraqis along with horror
and dismay as
aerial attacks by U.S.-led allied forces continued for the
fourth straight
day.
In the Iraqi
capital, the refugees said, residents are cut off from the rest of
the country
and from one another, not knowing what is happening in other
areas of town.
"People wait
for the sirens, but they only come on after the first raid," said
Nidal Khalil,
a mechanic, who said he and his family had been living without
lights or water
since last week. "After the first strike early Thursday, and
with second
and third air attacks on Baghdad, the bombing seemed less
selective,"
Khalil remarked. "At first, the Iraqis felt confident."
"When the planes
come, people run left and right and look for basements
and shelters,"
said Yaaqoub Chahine, a teacher, who described himself as a
"stateless"
Palestinian who lived in Kuwait and now is looking for a new
home. "People
have started hating these air raids. They live in constant
horror, fearing
death in their shelters. Their faces are pale, their bodies
tremble from
the unknown. This is the reality," Chahine said grimly.
While some refugees
expressed enthusiasm and support for Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein's
confrontation with the U.S.-led alliance, their zeal
seemed tempered
and they were visibly shaken by their hazardous trip.
A young Jordanian
mother, rocking a 2-year-old baby in her arms as she
stood in the
cold desert wind at Ruweishid, said her children were
"hysterical."
Hiyam Naji Rashid
said she decided to leave with her children after her
neighborhood
was struck repeatedly on the first morning of the allied air
strikes. "We
were at home in {the Baghdad district of} Doura. There was
an air raid
every two hours. The planes came three times. There were no
casualties in
our quarter, but people are terrified," Hiyam said.
"No one was expecting
this to happen. We have never seen anything like it.
Not in eight
years of war with Iran," she said as she tried to console her
son, Rami, who
was crying uncontrollably.
Umm Mohammed,
54, was among the most shaken of today's arrivals.
Straining to
maintain composure, the Palestinian mother of seven said she
was on the verge
of collapse.
"My children
screamed all night. They all piled up on top of me. My eldest
son Mohammed
was taken with {Iraq's} Popular Army to Kuwait. We
know what is
happening there. He may never come back. . . . I guess he
went voluntarily
with them," she said slowly.
"With the war
against Iran, we knew what to expect, now with the
Americans, it
is different. People are just abandoning their homes. We have
still not recovered
from the war with Iran," she said.
Umm Mohammed
said most Iraqis she knew would have preferred a
diplomatic solution
to the gulf crisis. "We want them to stop this war now.
We also want
{Iraq} to stop this shelling against Israel, because they have
children, too.
But {the Israelis} must get out of our land. Let them stop
from all sides.
All mothers think like this," she said.
"To hell with
all the oil, but please protect our young men," she added, as
tears started
rolling down her cheeks.
Chahine, the
Palestinian teacher, said Saddam's strike against Israel had
made him happy
at first. "I first thought that this is a great lesson. This is
how I felt about
Kuwaitis when Iraq invaded. But then {the Iraqis} stayed
and things got
very bad."
Chahine said
he left behind a pregnant daughter who was about to deliver,
and he feared
she would go into labor during an air raid. She had a book
on natural childbirth,
he added, which she presumably would use if she
could not make
it to a hospital.
Fares Yahya Rashid,
28, said the suburbs of Baghdad have been shelled.
"People are
trying to preserve themselves. Only a few gasoline stations are
open and people
are living on hoarded food, no electricity or water," he
said.
Rashid said the
presidential palace and a building in central Baghdad
housing much
of the city's telecommunications hardware "have suffered
minor damage."
Other reports, however, suggested the presidential palace
has been more
extensively damaged.
The residential
neighborhoods of Jadriyyah and Qadissiyya, and the Doura
central bus
station, were also hit, according to a group of refugees who
reached here
from Baghdad today. Rasid said that some of the bombing
has hit the
residential area of Hayy Al Mansour, and university student
Mahmoud Lati
said a church was almost flattened in the northern city of
Mosul.
"On the first
morning after the raid, a bus full of people at Doura was hit,
when the planes
came in the daytime," one man said. Half a dozen others
interviewed
separately confirmed the report.
"Now there are
no taxis, no transport, and each of us knows only what
happens in his
area," said Youssef Boutros Baqaa, 22. "Last night, some
kind of rocket
fell near our home in Jadriyyah. The bombing is not precise."
Taxi driver Abdul
Wahab Massoud held up a large round fragment of green
metal imprinted
with English lettering from what he said was a downed
American plane.
Massoud accompanied
Nimr Madi, a Palestinian who had driven from
Kuwait to Baghdad
and then to the Jordanian border. Madi said he saw
three cars full
of bodies and coffins at a gas station in Basra.
"There are many
civilian casualties in Basra and Kuwait. I saw many coffins
in Basra, some
of them small," Madi said, adding that an oil refinery in
Basra had been
hit. e described nighttime raids over Kuwait as "very
intensive" and
said heavy anti-aircraft fire there "turns the sky into a kind of
hell."
"When the planes
come to hit a target they also hit homes around them,"
Madi said.