At midnight Washington time (8 a.m. in Kuwait), a ceasefire ordered by President George H.W. Bush took effect, ending the Gulf War exactly 100 hours after the ground campaign began. A U.S.-led coalition of 35 nations had routed Iraqi forces and liberated Kuwait following Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion, leaving Kuwaiti oil fields ablaze and a 'highway of death' littered with destroyed retreating vehicles.
President George H.W. Bush announced from the Oval Office that all offensive combat operations would cease at midnight Eastern time on February 27 into February 28, 1991—exactly 100 hours after General Norman Schwarzkopf's ground assault, 'Operation Desert Storm,' had begun. Coalition forces from 35 countries had smashed through Iraqi defensive lines with stunning speed, liberating Kuwait City just two days earlier.
The retreating Iraqi army left behind a scene of devastation. Fleeing along the road from Kuwait City to Basra, thousands of vehicles were destroyed by coalition airpower in an episode journalists dubbed the 'Highway of Death.' Saddam Hussein's forces had also set fire to more than 600 Kuwaiti oil wells before withdrawing, creating an environmental catastrophe that burned for months and blackened skies across the region.
Bush chose to stop the war rather than push on to Baghdad, a decision he defended as fulfilling the UN mandate to expel Iraq from Kuwait without becoming bogged down in regime change and urban warfare. Critics later argued the restraint left Saddam Hussein in power to brutally suppress uprisings and set the stage for the second Gulf War twelve years later. The ceasefire produced a lopsided casualty count: fewer than 300 coalition deaths against tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers.
Key people: George H.W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, Norman Schwarzkopf