Kuwait

KUWAIT CITY -- A man in civilian clothes drove his pickup truck into a group of U.S. soldiers outside a store at a military base in northern Kuwait yesterday, injuring 15 of them, officials said. The driver was shot and critically wounded by soldiers who saw the apparent attack. Fourteen soldiers suffered minor injuries, and one was sent to Germany to receive treatment for an injured knee. The incident occurred about noon and came one day after a suicide bomber detonated explosives in a taxi at a checkpoint near the southern Iraq town of Najaf, killing four U.S. soldiers.

WITH THE 75TH EXPLOITATION TASK FORCE, in northern Kuwait - Two young American soldiers have been rescued by Marines after being stranded in the southern Iraqi desert for seven days. Spc. Jeffrey Klein, 20, and Sgt. Matthew Koppi, 22, mechanics with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, were in good spirits, if thirsty, hungry and tired, after their rescue Friday, when Marines in Chinook helicopters spotted them dug into trenches in the flat sand. No one was quite sure yesterday whether or why their unit had failed to notice their absence or that of an officer's Humvee.

KUWAIT CITY - The war yesterday: good for American and British forces, who pummeled important military targets in Iraq while sparing civilians, - only it was a bad day, because their claims of success were lies, or so Iraq insisted. Bad day for Saddam Hussein, because many of his soldiers were killed and his troops had to shoot their own people to keep them from fleeing Basra, according to journalists at the scene. But the Iraqi government said otherwise - that there were no significant military casualties and that there were no problems in Basra because people there love Hussein.

The body of Marine Staff Sgt. Kendall D. Waters-Bey, a Northeast Baltimore native who was among the first casualties of the Iraq war, is back in the United States. Waters-Bey's body was flown to Dover Air Force Base early Thursday morning, his father said. The military has told Waters-Bey's family the remains will be turned over to them in three to five days. At that point, the family will begin planning services to be held in Baltimore. Waters-Bey, 29, died when the helicopter he was aboard crashed March 20, the second day of combat.

WASHINGTON - The war in Iraq is providing Pentagon officials with a biting reminder that the nation's most powerful tank divisions can't run to a fight - they have to sail to it, at speeds no faster than about 22 knots. At a time when Army leaders near Baghdad say they want more tanks and artillery to protect their vulnerable supply lines, the nearest heavy armored division is still at least a week away, its soldiers flying in from Texas but its equipment still sailing around the Arabian Peninsula headed for Kuwait.

KUWAIT CITY - The war in Iraq came to Kuwait in the dead of night today in the form of a missile that slammed into a pier connected to a major shopping mall, blew out large chunks of ceiling and shattered glass doors and windows up to a half-mile away. There were no known injuries. The missile was believed to be a Silkworm, an anti-ship missile and the Chinese-made version of the Soviet Styx, according to U.S. officials. The Silkworm, which may have been fired from southern Iraq, has a range of about 50 miles, flies low and could escape detection by the American Patriot, used against high-altitude missiles.

SOUTHERN IRAQ - For an elite rapid-deployment force, the Army's 101st Airborne Division sometimes moves excruciatingly slowly. It took a truck convoy a full 18 hours to move just 30 miles from its base camp in northern Kuwait to the Iraqi border yesterday - only the beginning of a long journey. One or another vehicle would break down, and when it was fixed another would stall. Even when the convoy moved, it did so at about 10 miles an hour, passed on both sides by other American and British military vehicles including a caravan of 54 fuel tankers.

SAFWAN, Iraq - The barefoot boy, maybe 5 years old, was named Jan if he understood the question put to him yesterday, the day this one small child on this one small patch of blood-dampened desert scrambled for some benefit from war, a tiny benefit, but something. Food arrived here yesterday in southernmost Iraq. Water did, too. To meet it came this little boy: dirty, thirsty, hungry, desperate, dressed in ragged clothing that just 54 miles to the south, in Kuwait City, would not be used to wipe down a car. And with the boy came many other boys and many men and a few women and the chaos to be expected when three 18-wheel tractor-trailers filled with supplies arrive at a town in which people have been scooping rain from dirt puddles to wash and to drink.

Even in the desert of Kuwait, surrounded by the bravery of fellow soldiers, 1st Lt. Claus Kreinschroeder marvels at the fortitude of an 11-year-old girl. "She has never been shown anything but love," he says of his daughter, Alyssa. Maybe it's love that has enabled her to get through her mother's cancer, and now, her father's absence. Alyssa might not recognize her dad now, with his shaved head. But she knows the generosity and quick wit he has displayed here in a staging area called Camp Pennsylvania.

CAMP PENNSYLVANIA, Kuwait - Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division have been sent here to fight a war, but the only combat many have seen so far has been on CNN. The division's Bastogne Brigade is stuck in camp, awaiting orders to head to Iraq. And many restless soldiers dressed for battle with nowhere to go are taking in the war from metal chairs in front of the big-screen JVC at the television tent. From those chairs, they confront the troubling questions of war. They see the uncertain faces of fellow soldiers being held prisoner, they look at dead bodies, and they wonder what the next days hold out for them.