Defense Department News Briefing

Representatives from the Department of Defense described the status of the U.S. and coalition’s military efforts in the Persian Gulf war to reporters in the Pentagon. Gen. Kelly gave updates on recent Iraqi SCUD missile attacks on Israel and Saudi Arabia, and delivered statistics on numbers of personnel, aircraft, casualties, and P.O.W.'s. Admiral Herrington announced that the oil slick in the Persian Gulf was no longer being fed from Kuwaiti tankers or pipelines, but it was now sixty miles long and twenty miles wide. It was moving in a southerly direction toward the coast of Saudi Arabia. Responding to a question of why the coalition forces were not shooting down Iraqi aircraft flying from Iraq to Iran, Gen. Kelly said coalition forces were shooting down such aircraft when possible. Since the main objective of the coalition forces is to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the coalition was not going to spend large amounts of resources in order to shoot down planes leaving the sphere of m close