Iraq claims to have killed 1500

Press, 22 October 1983, Page 10

Iraq claims to have killed 1500

NZPA-Reuter Bagdad Iraq said yesterday that its troops had killed 1500 Iranians and wounded many others in fighting on the northern Gulf War front since the start of a new Iranian offensive. A High Command communique said that Iraqi troops around the border town of Penjwin, the target of the Iranian offensive, also destroyed 10 Iranian tanks and 16 armoured personnel carriers. They had also destroyed huge quantities of arms and ammunition.

Bagdad television said that King Hussein of Jordan and King Fahd ibn AbdulAziz of Saudi Arabia had both telephoned President Saddam Hussein to hear details of the latest developments on the new Iranian assault.

The Bagdad communique came after a report from

the Iranian national news agency Irna that at least 2000 Iraqi troops were killed or wounded in the first four hours of the offensive.

The agency, received in London, said that many Iraqi soldiers and “counterrevolutionaries” had been captured in the thrust into Iraqi territory between the north-west Iranian towns of Baneh and Marivan. Irna said that its correspondents aft the front had reported Iranian forces were consolidating their gains. Two Iraqi battalions had been wiped out and another 80 per cent destroyed# quoted the Iranian military headquarters in the area as saying. The agency said earlier that fierce fighting was still raging, while Teheran radio reported that 100 sq km of Iraqi territory had been seized in the offensive.