The death toll from the attack remains unknown.

The wreckage found on the highway consisted of at least 28 tanks and other armored vehicles with many more commandeered civilian cars and buses filled with stolen Kuwaiti property. The road bottle-neck near the Mutla Ridge police station was reduced to a long uninterrupted line of more than 300 stuck and abandoned vehicles sometimes called the Mile of Death. Vehicles surviving the air attacks were later engaged by arriving coalition ground units, while most of the vehicles that managed to evade the traffic jam and continued to drive on the road north were targeted individually. Navy pilots from USS Ranger (CV/CVA-61) attacked the convoy using a variety of weapons. The attack began when A-6 Intruder attack jets of the United States Marine Corps' 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing blocked the head and tail of the column on Highway 80, bombarding a massive vehicle column of mostly Iraqi Regular Army forces with Mk-20 Rockeye II cluster bombs, effectively boxing in the Iraqi forces in an enormous traffic jam as the turkey shoot began in earnest, setting up targets for subsequent airstrikes. Two Iraqi T-54/55 tanks lie abandoned near Kuwait City on February 26, 1991

Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that upwards of 70,000 to 80,000 troops from defeated divisions in Kuwait might have fled into Basra, evading capture.

Many Iraqi forces successfully escaped across the Euphrates river, and the U.S. Bush's decision to declare a cessation of hostilities the next day. The scenes of devastation on the road are some of the most recognizable images of the war, and it has been suggested that they were a factor in President George H. Between 1,400 and 2,000 vehicles were hit or abandoned on the main Highway 80 north of Al Jahra. ĭuring the American-led coalition offensive in the Persian Gulf War, American, Canadian, British and French aircraft and ground forces attacked retreating Iraqi military personnel attempting to leave Kuwait on the night of February 26–27, 1991, resulting in the destruction of hundreds of vehicles and the deaths of many of their occupants. and British forces in the initial stages of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was repaired after the Gulf War and used by U.S. The road was used by Iraqi armored divisions for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It runs from Kuwait City to the border town of Safwan in Iraq and then on to the Iraqi city of Basra. The Highway of Death ( Arabic: طريق الموت ṭarīq al-mawt) is a six-lane highway between Kuwait and Iraq, officially known as Highway 80.

The road of the dead