DESERT STORM: DAY 14

Military

The first major ground battle of the war was fought early today in and around the frontier Saudi Arabian port of Khafji. Twelve U.S. marines were killed and two wounded, the U.S. military said. They were the first American ground forces to die in battle in the heaviest ground fighting so far. Heavy Iraqi casualties were reported. Allied troops engaged Iraqi soldiers along a 25-mile long front extending from Kuwait’s Al Wafra oil field to Khafji, a Saudi military spokesman said. Marines fired anti-tank weapons and called in air strikes to repel an assault by tank-led Iraqi forces, the U.S. military reported.

* Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf said that two weeks of bombing raids have forced Iraq to abandon centralized control of its air defense. He said the allies have supremacy over Iraqi skies. More than 30,000 sorties were flown and 19 aircraft were lost since the war started, he said. The bombing was aimed at the “systematic destruction” of the Iraqi air force’s hardened shelters, and more than 70 have been destroyed, he said.

* In other action today, U.S. Navy A-6s attacked four Iraqi patrol boats and destroyed three of them, the U.S. Central Command said.

* Environmental experts worked frantically to control the biggest oil spill ever. The slick, estimated at 460 million gallons, was expected to arrive Thursday at the Saudi city of Jubayl, site of the world’s largest desalination plant, according to salvage experts. Meanwhile, a new oil slick has appeared in the gulf, emanating from an Iraqi oil terminal, British military sources said today.

Political

President Bush invoked the memory of another wartime president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to rally support for Operation Desert Storm. Speaking to lawmakers in the Capitol, Bush said the goal of the Persian Gulf War is the “triumph of the moral order.” Bush made no mention in his brief speech of the deaths of 12 Marines in a battle with Iraqi troops today, but the President was “very saddened” by the deaths, spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said afterward.

Financial

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was sharply higher.

* The price of the benchmark North Sea Brent crude oil for March delivery was up. The dollar was higher against most major foreign currencies in quiet early European trading. Gold prices dropped more than $5 an ounce in Europe.