Iraqis Launch Major Offensive Against Iranians

Iraq launched a major offensive against Iranian positions on the southern front of the Persian Gulf War on Monday, but Iran said the attack has been crushed.

The attack, announced by Iraq’s military spokesman in Baghdad, was the first by the Iraqis in many months in a border area where the Iranians have been firmly entrenched for the last year.

Iran’s national news agency said the assault took place in the Majnoon Islands area, a swampy region just west of the border. The man-made islands were originally built to exploit oil reserves in the area and were seized by Iran early last year.

The Iranian agency initially reported intense fighting and later said Iranian forces inflicted heavy losses on the Iraqis in gaining full control of the battlefield.

But an Iraqi military spokesman, speaking on Baghdad radio, said that many Iranian troops were killed in the fighting and that the Iraqis captured a number of Iranian positions.

The spokesman referred only to “the southern sector” of the war front. Persian Gulf diplomats said that if the Iraqis had pushed their way into Iranian territory, they would probably have said so.

The latest offensive turned the focus of the 52-month-old war back to the ground fighting after a series of almost daily Iraqi claims to have hit merchant ships in the gulf.