5-Year War Stepped Up, Iran and Iraq Report

Iraqi warplanes bombed towns, troops and oil installations Tuesday, and Iran fought back with attacks on Iraqi forces in stepped-up fighting in their five-year-old war, reports from the two sides said.

The intense Iraqi air raids came amid reports that the Iranians have been sending thousands of fresh troops to the war front in recent weeks in preparation for a new offensive in the stalemated war.

Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency said that Iraqi bombs crashed into the southern border town of Hawizah, killing at least 14 civilians and injuring 28 others.

Iraqi jets also attacked Iranian troops in 152 other bombing missions, said the official Iraqi news agency, monitored in Beirut.

Meanwhile, the Baghdad regime reported hitting a “large naval target near the Iranian shore” in the gulf.

The Iraqi mention of a “large naval target” has in the past meant an oil tanker. There was no immediate confirmation, however, that a ship had been hit.

A military spokesman in Baghdad said Iraqi warplanes sent bombs and rockets into Iranian troop positions in nearly 800 raids during the past six days, killing thousands of troops.

“What Iran has witnessed in the last six days was but a small part of Iraq’s aerial might,” the spokesman said. “Destruction will cover all of Iran, if Iraq uses all the means at its disposal.”

Iraqi aircraft also attacked the main Iranian oil terminal at Kharg Island on Tuesday, for the 48th time since mid-August, setting installations there ablaze, the Iraqi news agency said.

Iranian jets bombed military installations at Amarah, some 50 miles from the border, attacking Iraqi troop concentrations on their way back to base after the mission, the Iranian news agency said.

Iranian troops made an early-morning attack on an Iraqi military post near Sar-e Pol-e Zahab, further north along the front, killing or injuring 40 Iraqi troops in a three-hour battle, before returning to base, said Tehran radio, monitored in Greece.

In Hawizah, the Iranian news agency said, the Iraqis destroyed 13 houses in their bombing raid. Hawizah, sitting on the edge of the marshes that straddle the Iranian-Iraqi border, was destroyed by Iraqi forces in the early part of the war, which erupted in September, 1980.