Iran-Iraq War: Attacks on Tehran, Baghdad and Gulf Maritime Target

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5 of 7 DOCUMENTS

BBC Summary of World Broadcasts

March 15, 1985, Friday

Iran-Iraq war: attacks on Tehran, Baghdad and Gulf maritime target

SECTION: Part 4 The Middle East, Africa and Latin America; ME/7900/i;

LENGTH: 438 words

Air raids on Tehran and Tabriz were reported by Tehran radio on 14th March*. Three people had been killed in the capital, and five in the 13th March raid on Esfahan, according to the Iranian agency, which said that since the latest round of Iraqi air attacks on Iranian cities began on 4th March, more than 1,000 people had been killed. The Majlis Speaker, Hashemi-Rafsanjani, was quoted by the agency on 14th March as saying that Iran was being pushed to the point of carrying out its threat of launching missile attacks on Iraqi industrial centres, the agency said. This warning was repeated in a communique broadcast by Tehran radio* at 0430 gmt on 14th March reporting that the Khatam ol-Anbya missile unit had launched a missile attack on Baghdad at midnight gmt, a claim disputed by Baghdad radio* which said the attack had been an ''explosive charge . . . [set by] hirelings of the Iranian regime''. The Iranian communique also warned that all Iraqi cities would be attacked with exception of the four holy ones of Najaf, Karbala, Kadhimayn and Samarra. Bombing of the Iraqi towns of Halabshah, Sulaymaniyah and Rawanduz (and later Amadiya), Hurayn garrison in northern Iraq and the Darbandikhan dam area was reported in a communique broadcast by Tehran radio* at 1046 gmt on the 14th.An Exocet missile attack by Iraqi jets on a Panamanian super-tanker near Kharg Island at 0305 gmt on 14th March was reported by the Iranian agency. Reporting on the Ya Fatimah al-Zahra operation east of Tigris, Tehran radio* said at 1049 gmt on the 14th that so far 850 Iraqis had been killed and 315 captured. Sixty tanks had been captured and four helicopters downed. The agency said that 180 Iranians had been affected in the chemical weapon attack on 13th March.Baghdad radio* reported Iraqi air attacks on Tehran and Tabriz and on a ''large maritime target'' near Kharg Island on 14th March. The Iraqi agency reported the shooting down by ground forces in the Shib area of the southern sector on 14th March of an Iranian F-5 jet, the second claimed in two days. Of Iraqi ground operations in that sector, east of Tigris, Baghdad radio* said Iraqi forces had advanced considerable distances ''facing the defeated enemy forces with certain death between the Iraqi fire and the water stretches. . . The battlefields and waters were filled with thousands of bodies of the aggressors''. The agency reported later on the 14th that Iraqi forces had regained the Humayun and Sakhrah areas on the edges of the Hawr al-Huwayzah (Hoveyzeh marshes), capturing a great many Iranians and wiping out most of the forces stationed there.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH