"I didn't see any dead civilians," he said, "but there were some who were critically wounded. On the first day, an ambulance arrived carrying a mother, two small children and a 14-year-old boy. Their house collapsed on them. The woman's left arm had to be amputated, and the children were suffering from burns."
Virtually everyone interviewed both at the camp and the border post concurred that ambulance sirens wail on and off throughout the day and night in Baghdad and in Kuwait city, but many suggested that some of the casualties are from the falling shrapnel of Iraq's own antiaircraft rounds.
Perhaps the most poignant scene unfolded early Tuesday at the Ruweished border post, where Zuhair Adib, an aging Palestinian, was methodically retying onto his car roof three large, green plastic garbage bags that contained all his family's possessions.
On Monday morning, the family had fled their seashore home in Kuwait city, where Adib has worked for many years as a maintenance foreman at Kuwait National Oil Co. He described the situation in the occupied city as desperate.
"When the war started, I refused to work," he said. "There are curfews. People are staying inside. Everyone is in their homes."
Then Adib was asked whether there was enough food and water in Kuwait, and suddenly his wife intruded, waving her arms in the air and shouting: "The Arabs have all what we want. The God will give all to us what we need. All the Western weapons are coming to kill us now. But we will have victory--the Arabs and the Palestinian people."
Suddenly, Adib began crying uncontrollably. He wiped his tears, hid his face from his wife and, quietly now, began to answer the question.
"There is no bread," he said, his voice cracking. "If you have flour at home, you can bake. There are no bakeries. They are all closed. There is no meat. We used to go to Basra (Iraq's southernmost city) for food and vegetables, but we cannot go now.
"If you have something at home, you will eat. Otherwise, there is nothing."
FLEEING THE WAR
A U.N. plan for disaster relief in four countries--Jordan, Iran, Syria and Turkey--in case of large numbers of refugees from Iraq, would work like this. Estimates put the number of potential refugees at up to 1.5 million.
* Each country would have two reception camps.
* Each country would have four permanent refugee camps (some located inland, away from possible border danger).
* Each country would provide facilities for up to 100,000 refugees at a time. It is expected that refugees would move out after a period of time, making room for newcomers.
\o7 Source: United Nations\f7
