Then wave after wave of aircraft pounded the trapped vehicles for hours on end.
Several hundred more littered along another road, Highway 8, that leads to Basra.
The scenes of devastation on these two roads became some of the most recognizable images of the Gulf War.
In fact, Iraqi units are continuing to fight.
We continue to prosecute the war."
The bombing started near midnight.
Consequently, any vehicle that diverted off of the highway was tracked, hunted and destroyed individually.
Even disarmed Iraqi soldiers who surrendered were mowed down by gunfire.
Not one Iraqi survived.
Demolished vehicles line Highway 80, on 18 April, 1991.
Photo credit:TECH.
Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel, wrote Lebanese-American journalistJoyce Chediac.
The Iraqi troops were not being driven out of Kuwait by U.S. troops as the Bush administration maintains.
They were not retreating for regroup and fight again.
In fact, they were withdrawing, they were going home.
To attack the soldiers returning home under these circumstances is a war crime, Chediac added.
“Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this.
It’s pathetic,” said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer.
The most disturbing aspect of the incident was the secrecy involved, wroteMalcom Lagauche.
When Newsday broke the story, many were taken by surprise.
The media was also given a different story.
Photo credit:Staff Sgt.
Photo credit: Kenneth Jarecke
The burned-out truck, surrounded by corpses, on the Highway of Death.
Photo credit:Christiaan Briggs/Wikimedia
Photo credit:PHC HOLMES, US Navy/Wikimedia
