February 1991. The desert was black. Not just because it was night, but because hundreds of oil wells were screaming fire into the sky, choking the air with soot that felt like grit between your teeth. If you look at the photos now, they look like something out of a low-budget post-apocalypse flick. But for the thousands of Iraqi soldiers and unlucky civilians caught on Highway 80, it was very real. The Highway of Death Gulf War wasn't a battle. It was a bottleneck that turned into a graveyard.
Honestly, calling it a "highway" feels a bit generous for what it became. It was a 60-mile stretch of wreckage.
Most people think the Gulf War was just high-tech jets dropping bombs from 30,000 feet. That's part of it, sure. But the events of February 26 and 27 along the road from Kuwait City to Basra were different. It was raw. It was messy. It sparked a massive debate about war crimes that still hasn't really been settled today. You've got one side saying it was a necessary strike to break the back of an invading army, and the other side calling it a "turkey shoot" against people who were already trying to give up.
The Chaos of the Retreat
Iraq had already lost. Everyone knew it. Saddam Hussein had ordered his troops to pull out of Kuwait after the U.S.-led coalition unleashed a ground campaign that basically moved like a hot knife through butter. But here’s the thing: the retreat wasn't some disciplined, orderly march. It was a mad dash.
Imagine thousands of vehicles—tanks, armored personnel carriers, stolen Kuwaiti civilian cars, city buses, and even fire trucks—all trying to squeeze onto a single multi-lane highway at once. They were loaded with loot: televisions, jewelry, gold, whatever they could grab before fleeing. It was a massive traffic jam in the middle of a war zone.
Then the planes arrived.
The U.S. Navy and Air Force used a specific tactic. They hit the front of the convoy first. Then they hit the back. Suddenly, you've got thousands of people trapped in a "kill box." They couldn't move forward because of the burning tanks in front, and they couldn't go back. To the pilots in the cockpits of A-6 Intruders and A-10 Warthogs, it looked like a target-rich environment. To the guys on the ground? It was a nightmare.
✨ Don't miss: Who Has Trump Pardoned So Far: What Really Happened with the 47th President's List
Was the Highway of Death Gulf War a War Crime?
This is where things get sticky. If you ask General Norman Schwarzkopf, he’d tell you those weren't "retreating" troops in the sense of going home to be peaceful citizens. They were a defeated army moving to regroup so they could fight another day. Under the laws of war, an army in retreat is still a valid target unless they’ve officially surrendered.
But then you have journalists like Seymour Hersh and organizations like Human Rights Watch who looked at the aftermath and saw something different. They saw people shot in the back. They saw charred remains of people who weren't holding guns.
Check out the work of Peter Turnley. He’s the photographer who took some of the most haunting images of the war. He actually faced a lot of pushback for publishing photos of the "Mile of Death." The U.S. military was very careful about what images got out to the public because they didn't want a repeat of the "Vietnam Syndrome"—where the American public loses heart because they see the grit and gore of combat on their nightly news.
There’s a specific incident people mention: the "Checkmate" maneuver. By sealing both ends of the road, the coalition essentially guaranteed that nobody could escape. Some argue this violated the Geneva Convention because many of those soldiers were effectively hors de combat—incapable of fighting back. They were just sitting ducks in a traffic jam.
Breaking Down the Numbers
It's hard to get an exact count. You’ll see some reports saying hundreds died, while others claim it was in the thousands.
The most common estimates suggest somewhere between 1,400 and 2,000 vehicles were destroyed or abandoned. The death toll is even harder to nail down because many Iraqi soldiers simply jumped out of their cars and ran into the desert. They realized the vehicles were magnets for heat-seeking missiles and cluster bombs.
🔗 Read more: Why the 2013 Moore Oklahoma Tornado Changed Everything We Knew About Survival
- Total Vehicles: Approximately 1,400 on the main highway (Highway 80).
- Another Stretch: Another 400 or so vehicles were wrecked on Highway 8 to Basra.
- The Loot: Found inside the wreckage were luxury cars, stacks of Kuwaiti Dinars, and consumer electronics.
It wasn't just military gear. That’s the part that hits people the hardest. When you see a burnt-out Toyota Corolla next to a T-62 tank, it changes the vibe of the whole event. It shows the desperation and the chaos of those final hours.
The A-10 Warthog's Role
You can't talk about the Highway of Death Gulf War without talking about the A-10 Thunderbolt II. This plane was built for this. It has a giant 30mm GAU-8 Avenger cannon that can rip through armor like it's cardboard.
Pilots described the scene as "the Fourth of July." That sounds callous, but in the heat of a mission, these guys were focused on the mission parameters: destroy the equipment so Saddam couldn't use it to invade someone else six months later. They used Rockeye cluster bombs, which scatter hundreds of small "bomblets" over a wide area. It’s incredibly effective at stopping a convoy, but it's also incredibly messy.
Why We Still Talk About It
The reason this matters decades later isn't just about history. It’s about how we see modern warfare. The "Highway of Death" was the moment the world realized just how lopsided the technological gap had become. It wasn't a fair fight. It was an execution.
It also changed how the military handles the press. After the "Highway of Death" photos started circulating, the Pentagon realized that "clean" wars sell better. You started seeing more footage of "smart bombs" hitting empty buildings and less footage of the actual human cost on the ground.
Colin Powell, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, eventually pushed for a ceasefire partly because of the optics. He famously said the U.S. shouldn't be seen as "slaughtering" people who were just trying to get away. The "un-chivalrous" nature of the attack was starting to look bad on the international stage.
💡 You might also like: Ethics in the News: What Most People Get Wrong
Misconceptions You Should Know
People often get a few things wrong about this event. First, it wasn't just one road. While Highway 80 is the famous one, there were multiple routes out of Kuwait City that faced similar fates.
Second, it wasn't a total massacre of every single person there. A lot of Iraqis surrendered to U.S. forces or managed to flee into the marshes. The charred bodies people saw in the news were often the ones who stayed with the vehicles or were caught in the initial "pop" of the cluster munitions.
Third, the "civilian" aspect is complicated. While there were definitely civilians in the convoy—Palestinian refugees and families of Iraqi workers—the vast majority of the vehicles were being used by the Iraqi military or were stolen by soldiers. It wasn't a purely civilian refugee column, which is a common myth on some corners of the internet.
What to Do With This Information
If you're a history buff or just curious about how modern conflict works, don't just take one side's word for it. The Highway of Death Gulf War is a case study in the "Grey Zone" of international law.
- Research the "Basra Road" specifically. Look for the declassified after-action reports from the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing and the 1st Armored Division. They give a much more technical view of the tactical decisions made.
- Compare the imagery. Look at the official military footage versus the independent photography of people like Ken Jarecke. Jarecke’s photo of a charred Iraqi soldier in a truck was so graphic that many U.S. newspapers refused to print it. It’s a stark contrast to the "clean" war narrative.
- Study the aftermath of the ceasefire. The destruction on that road contributed to the total collapse of Iraqi morale, leading to the 1991 uprisings in the south. This eventually led to the "no-fly zones" that stayed in place until the 2003 invasion.
- Evaluate the "Proportionality" Principle. In international law, an attack must be proportional to the military advantage gained. Ask yourself: Was destroying 2,000 vehicles and killing hundreds of retreating soldiers necessary to liberate Kuwait, or was it overkill?
Understanding this event helps you see through the "fog of war" that usually surrounds modern reporting. History isn't just about who won; it's about the price that was paid and whether that price was justified by the rules we all agreed to follow.
The Highway of Death remains a blackened scar on the desert floor, but more importantly, it's a permanent question mark in the history of human conflict. It’s a reminder that even in "necessary" wars, the reality on the ground is rarely as clean as the maps in the briefing room.