War Victims Iraq

The neighbors huddle around their television sets in a San Diego housing project, two continents and an ocean from the heartbreaking events they are watching. Their complex is home to 10 Kurdish families who look after, and console, one another. It is a hot spring day, a good 50 degrees warmer than the freezing mountain climate many of their relatives are enduring.

The United Nations' Persian Gulf War reparations body said it has paid an additional $760.4 million in compensation to 16 countries that filed successful damage claims against Iraq. Among those compensated, Kuwait received $746.5 million for distribution to 250 corporate claimants and 21 government entities, the Geneva-based U.N. Compensation Commission said in a statement. Germany and Japan received $4.7 million and nearly $4.3 million, respectively, for corporate claims, and the U.S.

On a drizzly mountain morning, Majid Suleyman's family climbed up from a sea of makeshift plastic tents and garbage and out of the smoky haze of breakfast campfires around their mile-high camp. They were anxious but excited, going home. After a month in refugee squalor on the Iraqi-Turkish border--tantalizingly close to the nine-room house they had left behind in the Iraqi town of Zakhu--the Suleymans joined the growing procession of Kurds returning to the allied haven in northern Iraq.

The evidence of two crushing wars and a bitter rebellion within 11 years is still vivid in this age-old port on the Shatt al Arab waterway. The flame-blackened facade of the Basra Sheraton Hotel bears testimony to the terrible pounding the city has taken, over the decade perhaps the heaviest in the country. During Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran, shellfire battered the Sheraton. Rebuilt, the hotel was burned out again two months ago in the Shiite Muslim insurgency against Baghdad.

The United Nations' Persian Gulf War reparations body said it has paid an additional $760.4 million in compensation to 16 countries that filed successful damage claims against Iraq. Among those compensated, Kuwait received $746.5 million for distribution to 250 corporate claimants and 21 government entities, the Geneva-based U.N. Compensation Commission said in a statement. Germany and Japan received $4.7 million and nearly $4.3 million, respectively, for corporate claims, and the U.S.

The Salvation Army is requesting individual and corporate donations of blankets to aid Kurdish refugees of the Gulf War. Residents of Los Angeles County are asked to drop off new or clean, folded used blankets at any firehouse station or Salvation Army facility. The blankets are being collected nationwide. The U.S. Air Force will start airlifting and delivering the blankets within a few days. Cash donations will also be accepted. Checks should be made out to the Salvation Army, 900 W.

The evidence of two crushing wars and a bitter rebellion within 11 years is still vivid in this age-old port on the Shatt al Arab waterway. The flame-blackened facade of the Basra Sheraton Hotel bears testimony to the terrible pounding the city has taken, over the decade perhaps the heaviest in the country. During Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran, shellfire battered the Sheraton. Rebuilt, the hotel was burned out again two months ago in the Shiite Muslim insurgency against Baghdad.

The International Red Cross is proposing NEUTRAL SAFE ZONES IN IRAQ where civilians could go to escape allied bombing. President Cornelio Sommaruga suggested that the zone "could be a whole town." He also expressed hope that food supplies could be sent to Iraq by relief organizations, although he said that he realizes that could be tricky because U.N. economic sanctions are still in effect. "Certainly the first step is to have the agreement, the active interest of the parties involved," he

The massive allied bombardment of the Iraqi city of Basra has demolished every communications center in that strategic southern city, all major oil refineries, most government buildings, some civilian neighborhoods and hundreds of ammunition depots and food warehouses, according to eyewitnesses. The result: a hellish nightmare of fires and smoke so dense that the witnesses say the sun hasn't been clearly visible for several days at a time.

The continuing plight of victims of the Persian Gulf War, particularly Kurds who have fled into neighboring Turkey and Iran, has provoked an outpouring of aid from U.S. religious organizations. Assistance from religious groups comes as the United Nations and the United States--working with the British and French--worked to aid Kurds along the Iraqi border with Turkey.

On a drizzly mountain morning, Majid Suleyman's family climbed up from a sea of makeshift plastic tents and garbage and out of the smoky haze of breakfast campfires around their mile-high camp. They were anxious but excited, going home. After a month in refugee squalor on the Iraqi-Turkish border--tantalizingly close to the nine-room house they had left behind in the Iraqi town of Zakhu--the Suleymans joined the growing procession of Kurds returning to the allied haven in northern Iraq.

The continuing plight of victims of the Persian Gulf War, particularly Kurds who have fled into neighboring Turkey and Iran, has provoked an outpouring of aid from U.S. religious organizations. Assistance from religious groups comes as the United Nations and the United States--working with the British and French--worked to aid Kurds along the Iraqi border with Turkey.

The Salvation Army is requesting individual and corporate donations of blankets to aid Kurdish refugees of the Gulf War. Residents of Los Angeles County are asked to drop off new or clean, folded used blankets at any firehouse station or Salvation Army facility. The blankets are being collected nationwide. The U.S. Air Force will start airlifting and delivering the blankets within a few days. Cash donations will also be accepted. Checks should be made out to the Salvation Army, 900 W.

The Bush Administration revealed plans Thursday for a major expansion of relief efforts for beleaguered Kurdish refugees, a move that could lead to the first deployment of U.S. personnel into northern Iraq. As the Administration scrambled to counter criticism that it has been slow to help the Kurds, President Bush insisted that he is in "total agreement" with European allies on what steps to take.

The neighbors huddle around their television sets in a San Diego housing project, two continents and an ocean from the heartbreaking events they are watching. Their complex is home to 10 Kurdish families who look after, and console, one another. It is a hot spring day, a good 50 degrees warmer than the freezing mountain climate many of their relatives are enduring.

Guarding the peace may be tougher than fighting the war for the forward scouts of the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division. After spending months in the lonely desert and then devastating a division of the Iraqi Republican Guard during the ground war, the young soldiers and their giant tanks have rumbled into a new position six miles inside Iraq, guarding the northernmost U.S. checkpoint on the road north to Iraq's rebellion-torn second city of Basra.

The Bush Administration revealed plans Thursday for a major expansion of relief efforts for beleaguered Kurdish refugees, a move that could lead to the first deployment of U.S. personnel into northern Iraq. As the Administration scrambled to counter criticism that it has been slow to help the Kurds, President Bush insisted that he is in "total agreement" with European allies on what steps to take.

All allied prisoners of war in Iraq remain strictly off limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross, despite many formal appeals to Baghdad and hundreds of similar Red Cross visits to Iraqi prisoners now being held in Saudi Arabia and Britain, the committee's president told reporters in Amman on Sunday.

The International Red Cross is proposing NEUTRAL SAFE ZONES IN IRAQ where civilians could go to escape allied bombing. President Cornelio Sommaruga suggested that the zone "could be a whole town." He also expressed hope that food supplies could be sent to Iraq by relief organizations, although he said that he realizes that could be tricky because U.N. economic sanctions are still in effect. "Certainly the first step is to have the agreement, the active interest of the parties involved," he

All allied prisoners of war in Iraq remain strictly off limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross, despite many formal appeals to Baghdad and hundreds of similar Red Cross visits to Iraqi prisoners now being held in Saudi Arabia and Britain, the committee's president told reporters in Amman on Sunday.