Kuwait

FORT KNOX, Ky. - Two military officers testified yesterday that a man resembling Army Sgt. Asan Akbar warned that their unit was under attack moments before allegedly rolling grenades into headquarters tents in Kuwait in the early days of the war against Iraq in March. The testimony came during the first day of a weeklong preliminary hearing that will determine whether Akbar, 32, a native of Los Angeles, will be tried before a general court-martial. Army prosecutors contend that Akbar struck out against the military by also hurling grenades and shooting at soldiers as they fled from the burning tents.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - It began with a whisper in the courtyard of a Baghdad church. "I have information about missing Kuwaiti prisoners," a middle-age man said quietly as Easter service was letting out. He handed a reporter his address and left. Two weeks later, 37-year-old Sultan Aljazzaf sat in the Christian man's modest living room. A poster of the Madonna and child hung on one wall. A breeze squeezed through the barred windows, ruffling the lace curtains. The story told by the gracious, freckled man amounted to this: Last October, when Saddam Hussein opened up prisons as a political gesture, the regime executed 25 Kuwaiti prisoners held captive since 1990 or 1991 to conceal their existence.

Disinformation, it seems, sells. Iraq's former information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, did not make a very convincing spokesman when he subbed for the absent Saddam Hussein earlier this month. But now he's selling like hotcakes -- as the inspiration for a new talking "action figure" that repeats some of his most memorable statements. Herobuilders.com, a Con-necticut manufacturer of novelty dolls, began selling the figure in just the past few weeks, and already the "dis-information minister" doll is on back order, and an updated version has been added to the company's line.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Sometime during his imprisonment, maybe when he was hung naked with his arms tied behind him and guards were beating him, Salah Abdul-Kareem was as good as dead. This is known only because he is alive. He speaks softly, slowly, nervously. When he reaches for the most painful memories, his hands tremble as if a residual shock is passing through them. Sometimes when he talks he looks intently at a spot only he can see, as if viewing a film clip of the memory he is relaying.

UMM QASR, Iraq - The hospital is mobbed. Mothers press inside the concrete structure with sons and daughters suffering from diarrhea, malnutrition, coughs and fevers. Men hobble about the lobby with crude crutches that Americans might recognize from Civil War photos. Outside, children who are thirsty and threadbare beg foreigners for water and dinars, the devalued Iraqi currency. The three doctors at this port city's only hospital have been working day and night to treat the daily influx of 800 to 1,000 people since war began three weeks ago. That is about triple the usual volume, and the doctors are weary from overwork, frustrated that they have had to turn some people away.

KUWAIT CITY -- With Iraqi hospitals full of wounded and water shortages made evident by people in southern Iraq drinking from drainage ditches, humanitarian aid workers are warning that the worst for civilians could be yet to come. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water are needed in the south of Iraq, from the port city of Umm Qasr, where water is beginning to trickle in, to the chaotic city of Basra, where it is not. If the electricity needed for purifying water in the north remains cut, the problems for people in Baghdad and its environs could become even more severe.

IN THE DEMILITARIZED ZONE, Kuwait -- The name of this place, this "demilitarized zone," has become obsolete, as miles of its desert roads have become filled bumper-to-military-bumper with soldiers and weapons and tons of supplies, an indication of what is to come north of here. The Pentagon has said that troops and supplies have been steadily moving into Iraq as planned, but during the past several days reinforcements have rushed in and the movement of everything from water to ammunition to tanks has visibly accelerated.

Fox News Channel yesterday agreed to sideline Geraldo Rivera, its senior war correspondent, after U.S. military officials said he compromised the security of troops in Iraq. In a statement, the network said that Rivera had "volunteered to return to Kuwait," though Pentagon officials had insisted on his departure from Iraq. Rivera had arrived late last week to accompany the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division's push toward Baghdad. In reports that appeared on Fox News late Sunday and early Monday, Rivera sketched maps in the sand of that unit's activity, drawing the ire of U.S. commanding officers.

CAMP PENNSYLVANIA, Kuwait - Empty, it weighs less than a bag of flour, just flat folds of canvas-like material in green, black and brown Army camouflage. Fully loaded, it can tip the scales at 80 pounds and look like an overgrown first-grader - three feet high and about as wide, with fleshy appendages jutting here and there. The rucksack, and its smaller cousin the assault pack, are not mere bags. They are lifelines for soldiers expected to go weeks in the wild without shelter, shower or supplies besides food and water.

UMM QASR, Iraq - The wheelbarrow would not quite roll straight, but that did not stop the young man from filling it yesterday and pushing it away. Another man showed up in a little battered pickup truck with a big plastic basin in its bed. But most of the children, men and women arrived with small things, with empty bottles, plastic jugs, small trash cans, and even a vase or two. They arrived, at the edge of their battered city, to carry away some of...