Gulf foes report fierce fighting on southern front

Press, 10 March 1984, Page 10

Gulf foes report fierce fighting on southern front

NZPA-Reuter Bahrain Iran and Iraq both reported fierce fighting on the southern front in the Gulf war as a senior United Nations official said there was little hope of an early end to the 41-month conflict.

Iraq said it had killed, wounded or captured large numbers of Iranian troops and Iran said a “futile” Iraqi counter-attack on the island of Majnoon had been crushed. Iran’s national news agency Irna said more than 700 troops from an Iraqi infantry brigade were killed and a tank battalion destroyed when Iraqi forces tried to retake Majnoon, an artificial island built just inside Iraqi territory to exploit the area’s big oil reserves.

An Iraqi military statement said Iraqi helicopter

gunships had attacked Iranian positions close to the border.

A leading member of the United Security Council admitted there was no immediate hope for ending the conflict.

Sardar Shah Nawaz, last month’s president of the United Nations Security Council, also told reporters in New York that the council would probably not get involved in an examination of whether Iraq had used chemical weapons against Iran.

In what appeared to be a departure from usual practice, Iran said it would allow West European doctors to examine the bodies of two Iranian fighters it said had died from the effects of Iraqi chemical bombs.

The United States has said available evidence sug-

gests Iraq had used chemical weapons and the International committee of the Red Cross said it presumed Iraq had used “substances prohibited by international law.”

A senior Iraqi official, who asked not to be named, denied that this country possessed or had used such weapons. Iran offered cheap insurance rates to encourage tankers to call at its Gulf ports after insurance rates doubled after attacks last week by Iraq on ships using Iran’s main oil terminal of Kharg Island. Britain has protested to Iraq over an attack which crippled a British bulk carrier, one of three ships reported by their owners to have been hit in the Gulf last week, apparently by Iraqi missile attacks.