Iraqi Jets Raid Tehran; Heavy Damage Claimed

Iraqi warplanes destroyed an anti-aircraft defense network and a power plant in Tehran on Saturday in the first air raid on the Iranian capital in seven months, state-run Baghdad Radio reported.

Other Iraqi fighter-bombers attacked military targets in northwestern Iran closer to the Iraqi border, the radio added.

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, monitored in Nicosia, confirmed the raid on the power station. It made no mention of Iraq’s claim that the jets destroyed surface-to-air missile bases.

The Iranian agency said that the power station was damaged but that no casualties resulted.

3 Cities Attacked

It also acknowledged that the cities of Dezh Shahpur, Rabat and Mosek in Kurdistan province were hit. The agency reported civilian casualties in those raids but gave no figures.

Baghdad Radio interrupted regular programming to announce that the Iraqi jets flew 310 miles into Iran to bomb Tehran. It said the planes first hit the missile bases at 2:30 p.m., “reducing Tehran’s air defense system to rubble,” then attacked the power plant, “setting it ablaze.”

The last Iraqi air strike against Tehran was May 7, the city’s main oil refinery was the target and storage tanks were set ablaze. Eleven civilians were reported killed and 45 wounded in that attack.

Iraq said the targets in the three northwestern Iranian cities were troop concentrations and ammunition depots.

Targets ‘Demolished’

Those targets were “demolished” and all Iraqi raiding planes on Saturday returned safely to base, Baghdad Radio quoted an unidentified military spokesman as saying.

Neither side allows observers to the war zones as a rule, and battle claims can rarely be independently verified.

The Iraqi air force has Soviet-made MIG fighter jets as well as French-built Mirages and Super Etendards, and has maintained air supremacy in the six-year-old Persian Gulf War.

On Nov. 25, Iraqi jets made their longest sorties of the war, bombing oil tankers and other facilities on Larak island in the Strait of Hormuz, 750 miles south of Iraq.

Iran generally retaliates for Iraqi air strikes by firing surface-to-surface missiles on Baghdad and Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, 14 miles west of their border.

Iraq stepped up its attacks in recent months as Iranian leaders announced that they were preparing to launch a “final and fateful offensive” before the end of the Persian calendar year in March. Iranian leaders boast they plan to throw up to 1 million combatants into the offensive.