Iraq Reports Iran Missile Killed 48; Planes Strike Back

The Iraqi air force retaliated by bombing seven Iranian military camps after an Iranian missile devastated an entire block of a Baghdad residential area, an Iraqi military communique said Wednesday.

Forty-eight people were killed and 52 wounded in the attack on Baghdad, the official Iraq radio reported. It said 17 women and 13 children were among the dead. The reported toll was the highest in six Iranian surface-to-surface missile attacks on the Iraqi capital this year--three of them in the last two weeks.

In their retaliatory action, Soviet-built MIG and Sukhoi fighter-bombers raided the Iranian camps in a 2 1/2-hour blitz, the Iraqi military said.

However, Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, monitored in Nicosia, Cyprus, said only that Iraqi planes bombed residential areas around Saqqez in northern Iran, wounding eight civilians, and it did not mention other raids.

The agency also reported that the missile that hit Baghdad was aimed at an “intelligence headquarters” as a response to four days of Iraqi air raids on Iranian cities that it said killed 112 civilians and wounded scores.

Baghdad radio said five buildings were demolished and 35 others were badly damaged in the attack on Iraq’s capital.