! News Digest^-.
Edited by Jennifer O Cilka
U.S. plane downed
WASHINGTON - Pentagon
sources said Thursday that another
U.S. military aircraft had been lost in
the Persian Gulf war. Its crew of 14
was reported downed behind Iraqi
lines.
Members of
Congress said af
ter briefings from
Pentagon officials
that the aircraft was
a modified version
of the C-130
equipped with
small cannons and machine guns.
The aircraft went down over
Kuwait, the lawmakers said. A Penta
gon source, speaking on the condition
of anonymity, would not say whether
the plane was downed over Iraq or
Kuwait.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.,
said after a briefing for senators that
14 people were on the plane.
The lawmakers said the plane,
capable of flying at low altitudes and
destroying bunkers and gasoline trucks
with heavy firepower, was part of a
mission under Special Operations
forces.
The plane normally carries a crew
of five officers and nine enlisted per
sonnel.
Skip Toler of Columbia, S.C., said
his brother-in-law, Capt. Dixon Lee
Walters, 30, was reported missing in
action Thursday morning by the Pen
tagon. The Pentagon reported that
Walters’ plane had been shot down
behind enemy lines, said Toler.
At the Pentagon, spokesman Pete
Williams announced to reporters that |
the Defense Department will not dis- ^
cuss any reports of missing aircraft in
order to allow time for a search-and
rescue mission to be undertaken.
Williams pledged that information
about downed aircraft will be released
after the rescue mission is given up or
when the crew of a plane has been
recovered.
U.S. Marines killed in Khafji
The Pentagon released these names
and hometowns for the Marines listed
as combat deaths:
• Lance Cpl. Thomas A. Jenkins,
20, Mariposa, Calif.
• Cpl. Stephen E. Bentzlin, 23,
Wood Lake, Minn. Yellow Meadow,
Minn.
• Lance Cpl. David T. Snyder, 21,
Erie, N.Y.
• Lance Cpl. Michael E. Linder
man Jr., 19, Douglas, Ore.
• Pic. Dion J. Stephenson, 20,
Davis, Utah.
• Pfc. Scott A. Schroeder, 20,
Milwaukee.
Listed as missing in action:
• Capt. Michael C. Berryman, 28, \
Yuma, Ariz.
Iraqi Forces’ First Ground Assault
For the first time, U.S. Marines were reported killed In
ground combat during the heaviest fighting so far in the
2-week-old Gulf war.
10:30 p.m. Tuesday
The first 1950s-vintage Soviet-built T-55
tanks cross the border from Kuwait.
Some tanks had their guns facing
rearward, a sign of
surrender. The
Iraqis were
met by Marine
light armored
infantry and
tactical aircraft.
Iraqi losses: 10 Bfelil
tanks dastroyad,
four prisoners captured j ■ T 55 iQnk
U S losses: two U.S. Marine ^
light armored vehicles lost
I
I
Khafji
’’^KUWAIT
All times
are local
/
■ gn Early Wednesday EH Late Tuesday
&J Iraqi tanks and An Iraqi battalion invaded the
infantry engage the Saudi deserted resort town of Khafji. Allied
Arabia National Guard and forces respond with attack helicopters.
Marine tactical air. The Iraqi losses: FouM^s
invaders withdraw. and |3 vehicles destroyed
0 Thursday
Saudi-led allied forces storm the Iraqi-held town of Khafji. Some
light armored Saudi forces make it to the center of the city, but other
allied forces are forced into retreat. After repeated assaults the allies
retook the dty.
0 Wednesday morning
Forty more Iraqi tanks invade and are
met by the Marine light armored infantry.
Iraqi losses: Ten tanks destroyed,
nine prisoners captured
iource: U S. Department of Defense. Associated Press reports AP
Russian lawmakers ask end to patrols
MOSCOW - The Russian legisla
ture voted Thursday to ask President
Mikhail Gorbachev to suspend what
it called unconstitutional and poten
tially destabilizing plans to mount
joint army and police patrols in So
viet cities as early as Friday.
The effect of the vote was impos
sible to gauge in the increasingly tense
Soviet political atmosphere, but it
reflected anxiety among Russia’s
federation president and other reform
ers that hard-liners were preparing to
take control.
“Who knows what might happen
in the next 24 hours?” federation
president Boris Yeltsin said during
debate on the resolution. The Russian
legislature, on a 130-13 vote, asked
Gorbachev to suspend plans for the
patrols while the issue was reviewed
by the national Constitutional Sur
veillance Committee and considered
by the elected governments of the 15
Soviet republics.
Soviet officials last week disclosed
a decree signed secretly on Dec. 29
by Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov
and Interior Minister Boris Pugo au
thorizing the joint patrols as a means
to fight crime.
On Tuesday, Gorbachev established
a committee to oversee the patrols
and said they could not occur without
the agreement of local elected gov
ernments. Pugo also said the patrols
would not take place without local
consent and would not involve ar
mored personnel carriers.
But apprehension increased Thurs
day that hard-liners in the Commu
nist Party, the military, the police and
the KGB would send the patrols into
the streets on Friday in an effort to
consolidate what appears to be their
growing influence over Gorbachev.
The Russian resolution said in part
that “using armed military forces in
the streets of cities could lead to a
destabilization of the political situ
ation, to limits or violations of the
rights of free citizens, including the
rights of the troops.”
Parts of the patrol decree violated
constitutional provisions covering
emergency powers, it said.
The resolution passed after one
Russian lawmaker, A.V. Rutskoi,
warned that “this is not a decree for
fighting crime, it is a decree for fight
ing your own people.”
One of Yeltsin’s main parliamen
tary allies, Sergei Shakhrai, told the
legislature that the military patrols
were not professionally capable of
dealing with the crime wave and that
inexperienced young Army recruits
might accidentally fire their automatic
weapons on city streets.
Most of the increase in crime,
Shakhrai said, was in apartment bur
glaries and economic crimes, such as
speculation and black marketeering,
which cannot be fought with armed
might.
Other Russian lawmakers said they
thought patrols were intended to help
control possible rioting that some fear
could arise with sharp price increases
expected in February.
Mamies return attack near Saudi town where teams were trapped
KHAFJI, Saudi Arabia - The in
cessant barking of a dog somewhere
in the desert rose above the low rumble
of idling Saudi and Qatar armor as
sembled in the parking lot of a looted
gas station.
The rows of tanks, armored per
sonnel carriers and Marine humvecs
were set for a final assault to evict
Iraqi troops from this Saudi border
town.
It was the Saudi Army’s job, but
Marines had a stake in the operation:
two of their reconnaisance teams were
trapped in Khafji.
“We’re going to hold things down
until they’re able to come through,"
said Capt. Jamal, a Jordanian-born
Marine who did not give his first
name.
As thecolumn started off, the night
turned to chaos.
Lazy, rose-colored machine gun
tracers stitched across the road from
two directions. Rocket-powered gre
nades shot into vehicle ranks, selling
one armored personnel carrier ablaze.
Marines at a gas station on the
edge of town also came under fire.
Everyone scrambled for hum vecs, the
Army’s modem version of the jeep.
They roared off to the south, out of
range.
In the middle of the ragged pack of
fleeing vehicles, a speeding tank,
turrcnt swung to the rear to cover the
retreat, fired its cannon, adding to the
night a blast of yellow light. A hum
vec swerved in the shock of the con
cussion and kepi going.
“War sucks, sir," said the driver,
his voice squeaky with fear and exlnl
eraiion.
“Oh yeah,” Jamal answered breez
ily. “War sucks bigtime.”
As the humvees, tanks and armored
personnel carriers rushed down both
sides of the two-lane highway, Jamal
waxed philosophical.
“Sometimes the best intelligence
you can gel is when people shoot at
you,” he said.
So began a long night’s watch for
the mechanized 3rd Division Marines,
who huddled around humvec radios,
listening for their brethren.
“I was worried earlier tonight when
we couldn’t raise my man,” said Capt.
Kevin Monahan, a forward air con
troller assigned to the regiment. “Once
I heard him tonight, I felt a whole lot
belter.”
The recon team members had plenty
to say. They reported on enemy posi
tions, kept an eye on troop move
ments. They tried to stop the Qataris
when they accidently hit Saudi posi
tions.
The regiment even listened as one
recon member stalked an Iraqi per
sonnel carrier with a shoulder-launched
anti-tank missile.
The radio traffic was punctuated
by a rainbow of flares, anti-aircraft
tracers, distant bomb explosions.
Unseen jets streaked overhead, firing
flares to mislead mobile surface-to
air missiles brought up by the Iraqis.
But the flares and fire were only a
sideshow to the aerial attacks along
the northwest horizon, miles from
Khafji, where a heavy concentration
of Iraqi troops were said be massing.
The dull thud and distant flashes of
heavy bombing came in intervals
throughout the night.
The stretches of silence were inter
rupted by Qatari forces roaring up
and down the highway in counterat
tack. They went into Khafji, guns
blazing, at least a half-dozen times,
pulling out to regroup and rearm.
Each sortie was greeted by the red
tracers of Iraqi heavy machine gun
fire. They were answered by the hot
white flashes of tank cannons.
Smoking deaths up as old habits take toll
ATLANTA - More Americans have
quit smoking, and more are dying —
now more than 400,000 a year — as
the habits of the 1950s and 1960s lake
an increasing toll, federal health offi
cials said Thursday.
The national Centers lor Disease
Control reported that 434,175 Ameri
cans died from smoking in 1988, up
11 percent from the 390,000 deaths
attributed to smoking in a 1985 study.
Those numbers reflect a steady,
deadly trend, CDC researchers said.
Back in 1965, the calculated toll from
smoking deaths was 188,000.
“The problem is, we are now pay
ing for what happened 20, 30 years
ago, when large numbers of people
smoked in large amounts,” said Dr.
William Roper, director of the At
lanta-based CDC.
“Even though the percentage of
Americans now smoking is lower than
in the past, the burden of the past
practice is coming clear.”
That burden includes more than
100.000 deaths annually from lung
cancer, the leading cause of smoking
related deaths, Roper noted. The CDC
reported 111,985 smoking related lung
cancer deaths for 1988, up from
106.000 in 1985 and 38,100 in 1965.
“It takes 10, 20 years for the can
cer caused by smoking to result,” he
said.
Smoking also resulted in 48,896
other cancer deaths, such as mouth
cancers and pancreatic cancer, in 1988;
201,002 deaths from cardiovascular
diseases such as heart disease and
arterial disease; and 82,857 deaths
from respiratory diseases such as
bronchitis and emphysema, among
other causes.
The CDC also said 3,825 Ameri
cans died from lung cancer caused by
others’ smoking, or passive smoke.
But thcCDC’s statistical formulas do
not yet include passive smoking deaths
from heart diseases, which a recent
study estimated at 37,000 a year.
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