Iraq Claims That It Sank 29 Iran Ships, Downed 2 Jets

Iraq claimed that its warplanes and navy vessels sank 29 Iranian ships Saturday and shot down two jet fighters, while Iran said its forces were within artillery range of a strategic road linking Iraq with Kuwait.

State-run Baghdad radio, monitored in Nicosia and London, said missiles fired from Iraqi jet fighters destroyed the Iranian “naval targets” as “our eagles imposed their complete domination of the (Persian Gulf) skies.”

A later broadcast added that Iraqi naval vessels shelled and sank three “enemy naval targets on the Iranian coast.”

The broadcast did not say what type of vessels were sunk, but shipping sources in Bahrain said some of the targets had been ferrying supplies and reinforcements to the Iraqi port of Al Faw, which the Iranians claimed to have captured earlier last week.

Baghdad radio said Iraqi aircraft carried out 1,336 raids in four days against positions inside Iran and along Iranian supply lines. It said two Iranian warplanes were downed Saturday, raising to four jets and three helicopter gunships the number of aircraft Iraq claims to have shot down since Iranian troops began their offensive across the Shatt al Arab waterway last Sunday.

Meanwhile, Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that an Iranian helicopter had shot down an Iraqi jet fighter. The Iranian communique quoted by the agency said Iran has downed 23 Iraqi planes in the new offensive.

According to a recent report by the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, Iraq had 480 warplanes while Iran had 120. Iraq has used its jets to blunt previous Iranian offensives in the war that began September, 1980.

The Iran news agency quoted Kamal Kharazi, the head of Iran’s War Information Headquarters, as saying that the Iranian advance across the Shatt al Arab had cut off Iraq’s only access to the Persian Gulf. Kharazi also said that Iran had occupied 300 square miles of territory in southern Iraq and that Iraq’s Ranya Umm al Qasr naval base was surrounded.