Iraq says it is holding Iranians

Press, 21 February 1986, Page 6

Iraq says it is holding Iranians

NZPA-Reuter Manama, Bahrain Iraqi aircraft launched heavy strikes and Iraqi troops reported consolidating their positions, and Iran said its forces continued to push ahead in the Dawn-8 offensive on southern Iraq’s Faw peninsula. An Iraqi war communique yesterday said three columns attacking Iranian troops who invaded the peninsula on February 10 had fortified their positions during the day. A Reuter correspondent, Hugh Pope, witnessed seven raids in four hours at the disused oil port of Faw, where hundreds of Iranians were well entrenched in the town and surrounding mudflats.

Iraqi commanders said Iranian troops had advanced 20km west of Faw along the Khawr abd Allah waterway overlooking the Kuwaiti island of Bubiyan, and 12km up the Shatt al-Arab border waterway. Boats and barges were ferrying supplies across the 500-metre wide waterway.

Poor weather is reported to have hampered Iraqi air operations since the offensive started, and the muddy terrain favoured the more lightly equipped Iranian forces over Iraqi heavy armour. Iran has reported destroying a key Iraqi radar post, which watched over the northern Gulf, but Bagdad said its aircraft had destroyed an important Iranian naval base about 65km east of Faw. Iraq’s naval comman-

der at Umm Qasr, on the Khawr abd Allah channel on the Kuwaiti border, said his craft controlled the northern Gulf, although Iran said earlier its forces had Bagdad’s vessels bottled up as a result of the offensive. A Reuter correspondent, Subhy Haddad, reported Iraqi successes in the oil-rich Hawizah marshes, about 200 km north of the Faw fighting. His despatch from an Iraqi command post under fire on the manmade Majnoon islands said Iranian frontlines on the northern tip of the islands after Teheran’s forces had been pushed back in a counter-attack by the Iraqis last week.

Iran seized the islands — constructed to exploit the oil under the marshes — early in 1984, but an Iraqi commander said 90 per cent of the lost territory had been recaptured. The Iraqis said Iran was massing huge numbers of troops to the east, and Western Intelligence satellite photographs also suggested a big build-up. Diplomats said Teheran could be planning a second front to take pressure off its troops in the Faw peninsula. An Iranian soldier, one of nine being treated in Belgium for gas poisoning, had died, the Iranian Embassy said. Ghent University hospital doctors said yesterday that examination of the soldiers suggested they had been affected by mustard gas, backing Iranian allegations that Iraq had been using poison gas at the battlefront.