Iraqi Forces Counterattack Against Iran Bridgehead

A counterattack was launched by Iraqi forces Saturday against Iranian troops trying to establish a bridgehead several miles inside Iraqi territory near the port city of Basra. Cities on both sides came under heavy artillery or air attack in what Western military analysts said is the most serious fighting in the Persian Gulf War in nearly a year.

Iraqi war communiques said that two divisions of Iraq’s 3rd Army Corps launched a dawn counterattack on Iranian forces that drove west across the border late Thursday night and tried to dig into positions around an area known as Fish Lake, only six miles due east of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city.

Iraqi forces launched a “broad counterattack at dawn (Saturday) on positions occupied by Iranian forces and are purging the area of enemy existence,” Baghdad radio said. A later communique said that the Iranians had been pushed back across Fish Lake but that fierce fighting is continuing on the eastern bank, where the Iranians were being pounded by Iraqi artillery and air strikes.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA, monitored in Nicosia, Cyprus, said that Iranian forces captured two Iraqi outposts in the battle area and turned back two Iraqi counteroffensives Saturday morning.

Iranian communiques said that 600 Iraqi soldiers have been taken prisoner and that 18 Iraqi warplanes were downed over the war front. Iraq has said that it lost one warplane.

An Iraqi military spokesman here in Baghdad said that Iraqi jet fighters raided the Iranian cities of Qom, Esfahan and Dezful during the night, while surface-to-surface missiles were fired at Dezful, Ramhormoz, Nahavand and Borujerd in western Iran. It was the first time in 18 months that the Iraqis have used their long-range missiles to strike Iranian cities and towns.

Retaliation for Basra

Iraq said the strikes were in retaliation for continued Iranian shelling of Basra, which has been under heavy artillery bombardment since the current Iranian offensive began.

A resident of Basra, reached by telephone from Baghdad, said that that “shells are falling like rain.” An Iraqi military spokesman said that 20 people were killed and 100 were wounded in the artillery attacks on Basra and its environs Saturday. Another 16 people were killed and 64 were wounded Friday.

“The shelling was terrible. . . . Terrible and indiscriminate,” another Basra resident said.

Main Objective

Basra, about 300 miles southeast of Baghdad, is believed by most observers to be the main objective of a so-called “final offensive” that Iran has threatened to launch before the end of the year, which by the Iranian calendar expires March 21.

The latest fighting, according to battlefield reports, is along a roughly 20-mile-long front extending from the lower half of Fish Lake, southeast to the Shatt al Arab waterway just above Umm al Rasas island, across which the Iranians launched a similar but shorter-lived attack on Christmas Eve.

Fish Lake itself is a narrow, 16-mile-long, canal-shaped artificial lake that adjoins the Shab Muhaygin, a wider water barrier running eastward to the border.

One Iranian force reportedly crossed this barrier, reaching the east shore of the lake, in an amphibious assault late Thursday night. Another force appears to have pushed west over flat muddy ground just south of the water barrier and slipped around the southern end of the lake to establish a foothold on the western bank, about three or four miles inside Iraqi territory. A few miles to the southeast, fighting was also reported along the Shatt al Arab just above Umm al Rasas, but it was not clear if the Iranians had managed to cross the narrow waterway.

Pounding Positions

Iraqi war communiques said that the defenders had dislodged the Iranians from the west bank of Fish Lake and were continuing to pound their positions on the eastern bank with heavy artillery.

“Our forces hold the initiative now, and the situation is under control,” one communique, issued late Saturday night, said.

Iran’s communiques monitored in Cyprus gave a wealth of claimed detail about each Iraqi battalion reported to have been engaged, commenting that Iran’s “Muslim combatants are strengthening their positions in the area, the scene of a large number of Iraqi casualties and (capture of) substantial amounts of munitions.”

Once again, Iran spoke of the success of its special “anti-armor” forces. This appeared to be a reference to troops using TOW anti-tank missiles delivered to Iran by the Reagan Administration during the past year in exchange for American hostages in Lebanon.

Reports on ‘Karbala 5’

IRNA said that Iranian newspapers came out with special editions on Saturday giving detailed front-page accounts of the latest fighting, which the Iranians are calling “Karbala 5” in honor of an Iraqi city which is regarded as sacred by Iran’s Shia Muslims.

While it was impossible to accurately monitor battlefront developments from Baghdad, or evaluate the conflicting claims made by the two sides, Western diplomats in the Iraqi capital said that the current fighting appeared to be far more serious than last month’s battle farther down the Shatt al Arab.

For one thing, the fighting “is much closer to Basra this time, and the Iraqis have less room to maneuver,” one diplomat said. For another, there are indications that Iranian regular troops may be involved in the fighting this time, a Western military analyst said.

The soldiers who took part in last month’s fighting were said to have been Iranian Revolutionary Guards, not Iran’s better-trained regular army troops, who diplomats believe are being held in reserve for the “final offensive.”

Regular Troops in Use?

“If regular troops are being used, and there are some indications that they are, it would be very significant,” one Western military analyst said. It could also help explain why the Iraqis appear to be having more trouble dislodging the invaders this time than they did in December, he added.

Several diplomats said that the current fighting appears to be the most significant ground conflict between the two sides since the Iranians crossed the Shatt al Arab and captured the disused Iraqi port of Al Faw at the mouth of the Shatt last February.

Although similarly intense fighting took place the following July, when Iraqi troops were driven from the Iranian border town of Mehran, that battle had little strategic significance compared to the fighting for Basra.

‘Basra Is the Prize’

“Basra is the prize,” said one Western diplomat. “If it ever fell into Iranian hands, its loss would be devastating for Iraq.”

Despite this, Western military experts in Baghdad said they doubt this attack is the start of the “final offensive,” which some analysts think the Iranians are no longer capable of launching because of severe logistical and equipment limitations.

Rather, they see it more in terms of a probing attack to try to discover weak spots in the Iraqi lines and as an attempt to “save face,” in one diplomat’s words, following their defeat over Christmas.

An Islamic summit meeting is to be held at the end of this month in Kuwait, the diplomat noted, and the Iranians may be trying to influence its deliberations on the war by scoring a victory in advance of it.

Still, some analysts said that if Iran succeeds in establishing and widening its bridgehead and sees an opportunity for advancing towards Basra, it may opt to launch the “final offensive” it has long been threatening.

Iran has an estimated 700,000 troops massed on its side of the border, with about one-third of them concentrated in the southern sector.

“They are ready,” said one diplomat. “All they are doing is waiting.”

Times correspondent Charles P. Wallace contributed to this story from Nicosia.