The Saddam Line consisted of defensive

fortification A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Lati ...

s constructed by

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until Saddam Hussein statue destruction, his overthrow in 2003 during the 2003 invasion of Ira ...

Iraqi Army The Iraqi Ground Forces (Arabic: القوات البرية العراقية), also referred to as the Iraqi Army (Arabic: الجيش العراقي), is the ground force component of the Iraqi Armed Forces. It was formerly known as the Royal Iraq ...

Kuwait Kuwait, officially the State of Kuwait, is a country in West Asia and the geopolitical region known as the Middle East. It is situated in the northern edge of the Arabian Peninsula at the head of the Persian Gulf, bordering Iraq to Iraq–Kuwait ...

's border with

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

after Iraq had invaded and occupied Kuwait in August 1990. The Western media presented fears that it would present a formidable obstacle to the liberation of Kuwait, consisting of "flame trenches" (ditches filled with oil to be ignited in case of attack) and "sand berms, trench works, anti-tank ditches,

barbed wire Roll of modern agricultural barbed wire Barbed wire, also known as barb wire or bob wire (in the Southern and Southwestern United States), is a type of steel fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the ...

and minefields", backed by the threat of

chemical A chemical substance is a unique form of matter with constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Chemical substances may take the form of a single element or chemical compounds. If two or more chemical substances can be combin ...

and

biological weapons Biological agents, also known as biological weapons or bioweapons, are pathogens used as weapons. In addition to these living or replicating pathogens, toxins and biotoxins are also included among the bio-agents. More than 1,200 different kin ...

. The objective of Hussein was to force the coalition to engage in costly

trench warfare Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising Trench#Military engineering, military trenches, in which combatants are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from a ...

. However, those fears turned out to be unwarranted. The

Coalition A coalition is formed when two or more people or groups temporarily work together to achieve a common goal. The term is most frequently used to denote a formation of power in political, military, or economic spaces. Formation According to ''A G ...

assault, beginning at 4 a.m. on February 24, 1991, met "only sporadic resistance", and by 6:45 a.m., troops had broken through the Saddam Line. The US forces charged the Iraqi lines with

M1 Abrams The M1 Abrams () is a third-generation American main battle tank designed by Chrysler Defense (now General Dynamics Land Systems) and named for General Creighton Abrams. Conceived for modern armored ground warfare, it is one of the heavies ...

tanks modified with minesweeping plows and M728 Combat Engineer Vehicles which buried the trenchlines, and in many cases, buried Iraqi troops alive, the number of which has been estimated to be "in the thousands". Though the Iraqi Government said they found 44 bodies. So it is unknown the true number. Reference https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/appendix/death.html

References

Fortification lines Gulf War 1990 establishments in Kuwait Saddam Hussein {{Iraq-mil-stub

See also

References