World News Tonight (ABC) - 1991-01-31
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Read a transcript preview of “World News Tonight (ABC) - 1991-01-31” from malgent, uploaded on 2026-01-21.
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Language: English (original, YouTube automatic captions)
[0:06] From ABC, this is World News Tonight
[0:09] with Peter Jennings.
[0:10] >> Good evening. We begin again tonight
[0:11] with the first land battle fought in the
[0:13] Persian Gulf War. A psychological lift
[0:15] as far as Saddam Hussein is concerned,
[0:17] who calls it a thunderous storm in the
[0:19] Arab desert, but a military defeat as
[0:21] far as we know. What the US
[0:22] commander-in-chief says was like a
[0:24] mosquito on the back of an elephant.
[0:26] behind the rhetoric of the day. Real
[0:28] concern tonight about trying to stop 50
[0:31] to 60,000 Iraqi men and hundreds of
[0:34] tanks apparently now moving down along
[0:37] the frontier. There are early reports of
[0:39] a real battle actually shaping up. We
[0:42] also learned today that a fairly large
[0:43] US plane with more than a dozen people
[0:45] on board is missing behind Iraqi lanes
[0:48] and two soldiers, a man and a woman, are
[0:50] missing along the front lines. As for
[0:53] that Iraqi offensive northwest of Kafchi
[0:55] over the last couple of days, 11, not
[0:58] 12, Marines were killed and two soldiers
[1:00] who were missing at Kafi have been
[1:02] rescued. The battle for the town itself
[1:05] also involved America's Arab allies. We
[1:08] begin with ABC's Bill Ricker.
[1:15] The battle to retake Kafi continued
[1:17] throughout most of today.
[1:23] Tank and other ground force units from
[1:25] Qatar and Saudi Arabia did most of the
[1:27] fighting. Only a few Marine units are
[1:30] posted in the area because it is
[1:32] controlled by the Arab coalition forces.
[1:38] At one point the Iraqi fire was so
[1:40] intense the Saudis retreated.
[1:42] >> They are receiving fire from Mike 60
[1:46] tanks. Marines who provided some backup
[1:49] support said they