Gulf warfare ‘Vietnam-style’

Press, 2 March 1984, Page 6

Gulf warfare ‘Vietnam-style’

NZPA-ReuterManama, Bahrain Iran and Iraq yesterday claimed victories in fighting in marshlands in south-east Iraq which an Iraqi commander likened to jungle warfare in Vietnam. Iraq said that its forces killed 5462 Iranian troops during fighting east of the southern Iraqi port of Basra. The Iranian news agency, Irna, said that Iranian troops had repelled two Iraqi counter-attacks, one aimed at retaking the Majun Islands in the south-east Iraq marshlands, and one farther north near the Iranian border town of Dehloran. The Iraqi high command said that its jets had flown 212 sorties against positions in the east Basra and Misan sectors of the Gulf war, and on troop concentrations deep in Iranian territory, inflicting heavy losses. At an Iraqi field headquarters near the remote village of Al-Beidha, a field commander said that his men had crushed an Iranian offensive in three days of heavy fighting. “We destroyed the invaders, who occupied Al-Beidha and two other villages along with a

big area of the marshland in a Vietnam-type counter-at-tack,” the commander said. The Iranian Prime Minister, Mr Mir-Hossein Moussavi, said that Iran posed no threat to other States in the Persian Gulf and suggestions that it would invade them were propaganda. Irna reported him as saying after a Cabinet meeting, “If governments of the region are wise, they would realise that a lasting peace in the region will not become possible without eliminating Saddam (the Iraqi President, Mr Saddam Hussein).” Mr Mousavi accused the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and Britain of supporting Iraq with supplies of aircraft, tanks, chemicals and other weapons. He said that the big Powers had no right to be in the Gulf or the Indian Ocean.

He repeated accusations that Iraq was using chemical weapons in the 41-month-old war, but said that neither this nor Iraqi air and missile attacks on Iranian civilian targets would deter Iran. “We must be more decisive than ever to end the war with final victory,” he said.