British man attempting to flee from Iraqi-occupied Kuwait is shot dead
This week in 1990, a Briton was shot dead while trying to cross the border from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia. He was believed to be the first western casualty of the Gulf conflict.
The Foreign Office later said that it had protested to Bagdad and regarded the killing as an act of murder by Iraqi troops.
Douglas Croskery, a married man with two daughters,
from Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear, was reported to have been shot three times by an Iraqi patrol as he and a group of others tried to cross the border.
The Iraqis were said to have dragged him out of a car, thrown him to the ground, and then left him bleeding to death.
Foreign Office minister William Waldegrave said: “We do not know whether he was killed but we fear he may have been.
“This shows yet again that thesituationisextremelydangerous and the Iraqis are continuing to behave in a ruthless and barbarous way.”
The refusal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait led to the UN-backed Operation Desert Storm, which took place in January 1991.
It would end in February with the defeat of the Iraqis and their subsequent forced departure from Kuwait.
In other news, a night of rioting left 23 people dead in the South African city of Port Elizabeth.
The victims were among 28 people reported by the police reported by the police to have been killed in rioting around the country.
A local journalist in Port Elizabeth said at the time: “Criminal mobs ran amok... looting and burning shops at random and causing damage... A baby was shot dead in its mother’s lap.”.
Elsewhere, there were reports of continued massacres carried out by Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka.
Twenty-seven people – among them, nine women and three children – were gunned down when the rebels ambushed a bus in Trincomalee District.