In the Gulf War, Iraqi soldiers were killed and their bodies left lying on their backs on a desert road in southeastern Iraq on February 25-26, 1991, in an attack targeting Iraqi ground troops retreating along the Highway of Death. Wreckage and bodies were abandoned from about 1,800 vehicles that smoldered from about 8 km outside Kuwait City to about 80 km just before the Iraqi border. About 10,000 Iraqi soldiers were attacked, and thousands of Iraqis were killed or wounded.
The Gulf War broke out from August 2, 1990 to February 28, 1991, with U.S. troops leading a coalition of about 30 countries fighting against Iraqi forces. Following Iraqi claims that Kuwait was illegally drilling for oil across the Iraqi border, Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Fighting was confined to the border areas of Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Iraqi forces killed approximately 1,082 civilian noncombatants, including Kuwaiti women, children, and the disabled.
A U.N. Security Council resolution passed on November 29, Resolution 678 gave Iraq a withdrawal deadline of January 15, 1991, and authorized all means of force in Resolution 660 On January 12, 1991, the U.S. Congress authorized military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. Immediately after the withdrawal deadline, it executed the aerial component of Operation Desert Storm, launching more than 1,000 sorties per day beginning in the early morning hours of January 17, 1991.
The Persian Gulf War saw the use of precision-guided bombs, cluster bombs, BLU-82s, and cruise missiles in aerial operations that retained enormous killing power. Depleted uranium (DU) was first used on the battlefield in the Gulf War as anti-tank artillery; DU is a heavy metal and chemical poison that is nephrotoxic and teratogenic. On February 13, 1991, two laser-guided smart bombs killed civilian Iraqis when they were dropped on a residential area. On February 26, Iraqi forces began withdrawing across the border, and U.S. forces launched an armored assault on Iraqi forces just west of Kuwait, and conducted massive air raids on the unprotected desert areas of southern Iraq. The US military declared Kuwait liberated on February 27.
A Gulf War Air Power Survey (1993) of the U.S. military estimated that about 10,000 to 12,000 Iraqis were killed or wounded. In addition, about 2,300 civilian Iraqis were killed or wounded in the Gulf War. The U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau estimated that 86,000 Iraqi men, 39,000 women and 32,000 children were killed by coalition forces. About 2,000 Iraqi army troops surrendered. However, thousands of Iraqi soldiers were buried alive during a two-day insurrection on February 24-25, 1991. The Gulf War was widely televised, and the American public was intrigued and excited as the world watched missiles hit their targets for the first time and fighter jets take off from aircraft carriers on live TV.
After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the U.S. military engaged in a massive mobilization of military forces in Southwest Asia. Due to the massive involvement and the short-lived end of the Persian Gulf War, the US military casualties were minuscule compared to the Iraqi forces. The casualty figures were extracted from a global casualty system established by the US Department of Defense. Of the 219 U.S. military casualties (212 males and 7 females), 154 died in Gulf War combat; 65 died from non-combat causes; and 35 of the combat deaths were in Iraq. Of the combat deaths, 35 were the result of friendly fire. Eighty-three percent of all casualties were white, and the average age of death for all casualties was 26.9 years.
