Metres measure war progress

Press, 19 February 1986, Page 10

Metres measure war progress

NZPA-Reuter Manawa, Bahrain Iraq’s President, Mr Saddam Hussein, conferred yesterday with envoys of two of Bagdad’s main Arab backers and his troops reported progress counted in metres against Iranian forces in southern Iraq. The Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait flew to Bagdad after meeting Syrian leaders in an effort to halt a nine-day-old Iranian offensive into Iraq’s Faw peninsula, at the head of the Gulf. The Iranian troops’ thrust across the Shatt alArab waterway through defences Iraq thought im-

pregnable has shocked Gulf Arab States sympathetic to Bagdad. Iraq’s daily war communique said a threepronged offensive was forcing Iranian troops back on the Faw peninsula. One column along the edge of the Shatt alArab waterway had managed to advance 500 metres on Monday — recovering the ground it lost the previous day.

A central column had pushed ahead 600 metres, and the third prong, along the Khawr abd Allah channel, had advanced 2km.

Iran said its troops had killed 500 Iraqis and captured scores more when

they smashed a counterattack on the peninsula by the Iraqi sth Mechanised Infantry Division.

Teheran radio also reported that advancing Iranian troops had captured an Iraqi control post that had directed air strikes against tankers using Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal, in the northern Gulf.

The island and vessels using it have been under Iraqi air attack since August. The Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Prince Saud alFaisal, and Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, said before going to Bagdad that Syria — with Libya,

Iran’s main Arab backer — viewed the over-all situation with concern. Iran dispatched several envoys to several Arab States and India and Pakistan to explain its position. Iran sent to Europe 36 soldiers it said were injured in Iraqi chemical warfare attacks. Dr Gerhard Freilinger, head of the plastic surgery department of the Vienna Medical University, said eight Iranian soldiers taken there had definitely been exposed to poison gas and were in critical condition.