Iran Officials Die as Iraq Shoots Down Civilian Jet

Iraqi warplanes Thursday shot down a civilian Iranian airliner carrying a number of government officials on a tour of the war front between the two countries, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported here.

The Fokker F-28 Fellowship, a twin-engine jet, “was shot and blown up in the sky” about 15 miles from its destination, the city of Ahvaz, on a flight from Tehran, the official news agency said. Ahvaz is about 330 miles southwest of Tehran and 50 miles from the Iraq border.

The Iraqi attack “added a new page to the criminal file . . . of violating international conventions” that proscribe the shooting down of civilian aircraft, the news agency said.

Iraq denied that its warplanes had downed a civilian airliner. But, according to a Reuters news agency report from Baghdad, the Iraqi government said it shot down an Iranian C-130 military transport plane Thursday afternoon near Ahvaz.

The Iranian news agency said it is not known how many people were traveling on the plane, but Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Said Rajai-Khorasani, put the number of passengers at 46 and said everyone aboard was killed.

“I believe all the passengers and crew were martyred,” Khorasani said.

The downing of the Iranian airliner represents a serious new escalation in the five-year-old war between Iran and Iraq.

For the last week and a half, the Iranians have jubilantly claimed a string of successes on the battlefield against Iraq, particularly the capture of the former Iraqi oil port of Al Faw on the Persian Gulf. The Iraqi authorities have been forced to concede that many of the Iranian claims are true.

The Iranian news agency report said the Fokker airliner had been chartered by the Iranian airline company Asseman to carry government officials on a tour of the front-line areas.

The news agency said the officials included six members of the 270-seat Majlis, the Iranian Parliament, and Fadlollah Mahallati, an Islamic clergyman, who was identified as the special representative of Iran’s spiritual leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to the Revolutionary Guards, the young radicals who are running the war effort.

The party also included Hassan Shah-Cheraghi, the head of the Tayan group of newspapers, one of Iran’s largest publishing groups.

It was unclear whether the Iraqis were aware that the plane was carrying Iranian dignitaries. A similar flight on Tuesday was used to ferry a group of foreign correspondents on a well-publicized tour of the war front, and the Iraqis may have been hoping to prevent the Iranians from further exploiting their battlefield successes.

Civilian air traffic has been relatively unscathed during the protracted gulf war. More than half a million combatants are believed to have died, and Iraq has been charged with using poison gas.

The only other incident in which a civilian plane was shot down during the war occurred in May, 1982. That plane was carrying the Algerian foreign minister, Mohammed Seddik Benyahia, as he was on a mission to mediate an end to the war. Iran blamed Iraq for the downing of the plane and the deaths of Benyahia and 13 others on board.

Last March, Iraq warned that civilian aircraft would no longer be safe in the skies over Iran.

Few Flights to Tehran

The warning prompted most foreign airlines to stop serving Tehran, and a similar Iranian threat halted most foreign traffic to Baghdad. But as the months passed, most airlines resumed flying to Iraq, while only Syrian Arab Airlines now flies to Tehran in addition to Iran Air.

Iraq has achieved almost total control of the skies in the air war as many planes in Iran’s aging fleet of F-4 Phantom jets--delivered before the Iranian revolution in 1979--have been grounded because of a lack of spare parts.

Iraq is equipped with late model planes and missiles from France and the Soviet Union, while Iran has been placed under an arms embargo by most major arms-producing nations.

The Baghdad government conceded Thursday that Iranian forces have managed to shoot down six Iraqi warplanes since Iran launched its latest offensive a week ago Sunday. Iranian forces are using Soviet-supplied anti-aircraft guns that were captured from the Iraqis in the opening days of the offensive.

The Iraqis said they have shot down 14 Iranian planes, including one F-4 fighter and the C-130 claimed to have been downed Thursday.

Iraq’s huge advantage in air power appears to be playing only a small role in the latest fighting. Iranian anti-aircraft fire appears to have forced the Iraqis to fly at high altitudes, reducing the accuracy of bombing attacks.

Also, the Iranians appear to be adopting a strategy similar to that used by the North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong forces against U.S. and South Vietnamese troops during the Vietnam War. They use huge numbers of lightly armed men rather than fighting a conventional battle in which air superiority can play a decisive role. The Iranians also have been aided in the last two weeks by rainy weather that has obscured pilots’ visibility.