Iran Forces Advancing Near Basra : Iraqi Planes Bomb Tehran; Fighting ‘Most Serious’ Yet

The armed forces of Iraq battled new waves of Iranian troops trying to advance along a widening front toward the port city of Basra on Saturday as Iraqi jets bombed Tehran for the first time in eight months.

Iraqi war communiques denied Iranian reports of significant new advances on the southern front, about 300 miles from Baghdad. But it was evident from both versions of the fighting that the Iraqi army was engaged in one of the fiercest and bloodiest battles of the war to keep Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, from falling into Iranian hands.

“There is no question in my mind that this is the most serious situation of the war,” one Western diplomat here said. “Until a few days ago, no one would have thought the Iranians could ever reach Basra. Now I’m not so sure.”

Wedged in More Forces

War communiques out of Baghdad offered few specifics, but it appeared that the Iranians have succeeded in wedging more forces into a land corridor north of the Shatt al Arab waterway and south of Fish Lake, a man-made water barrier six miles east of Basra in southeastern Iraq.

The Iranians also claim to have overrun all of Buvarin Island, a large sand bar southeast of Fish Lake in the Shatt, and it appeared from television footage released in Tehran that the invaders had reached the palm groves that border the waterway as it curves northwest in a line through Basra.

If true, it would mean the Iranians have been able to widen the bridgehead they established at Fish Lake at the start of their latest offensive nine days ago. It may also mean that they have succeeded in relieving some of the pressure on an Iranian force previously described by Iraq as being trapped on an island in the large marshy water barrier that extends east from the southern end of Fish Lake to the Iranian frontier, analysts said.

Air War Escalates

In an escalation of the air war that appeared to reflect the developments on the ground, the Iraqi high command announced that Iraqi warplanes bombed the headquarters of Iran’s supreme ruler, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, on the northern outskirts of Tehran on Saturday, “striking the head of the snake.” Iraqi jets also bombed Dezful, Tabriz and Esfahan again Saturday.

An Iranian report, monitored in Cyprus, agreed that Tehran had been the target of an air raid but gave no indication that Khomeini’s headquarters had come under attack. The official Iranian news agency, IRNA, said that one Iraqi warplane had dropped bombs on a suburb of Tehran, killing a 55-year-old man and two children. It also reported that 20 people were killed in Iraqi air raids on other Iranian locations, including the towns of Kuhdasht and Ilam.

The attack on Tehran was the first since an oil refinery was hit in the Iranian capital last May. The Iranian capital was bombed extensively in 1985 as part of a so-called “war of the cities,” but the two sides stopped bombing and shelling civilians for nearly a year after U.N. mediation.

Iraqi Drownings Reported

In claiming the capture of Buvarin, Tehran radio said that the four-mile-long island was occupied on three sides by Iranians and that many Iraqi soldiers drowned while trying to flee across a section of the Shatt al Arab to safety. The broadcast said that Iranian forces had also crossed two additional channels of the Shatt estuary less than six miles from Basra after fierce fighting during the night.

A war communique issued by the Iranian news agency and monitored in Cyprus said that Iran had seized 60 square miles of Iraqi territory since launching its offensive a week ago Friday. IRNA said that hundreds of Iraqis were captured, including a brigadier general, whom it identified as Amir Ahmad Hussein.

Basra, meanwhile, was described by one Iraqi citizen who left the city Friday as a “ghost town.” Many of its 1 million residents have fled to escape the intense Iranian artillery attacks that have reduced much of the eastern and southern parts of the Shatt al Arab port to rubble.

‘Basra Is Destroyed’

“Basra is destroyed,” the Iraqi witness said. “The streets are littered with the rubble of houses and the skeletons of charred cars.”

The tallest building in Basra, the posh Sheraton Hotel, built to accommodate vacationing Arabs from neighboring Kuwait, has become a landmark for Iranian gunners. It has been hit more than a dozen times, and a foreign diplomat who spent a harrowing night in the basement of the hotel earlier this week said that shells were falling in the vicinity “at the rate of one every 30 seconds.”

Civilian casualties are said to exceed 500 dead and wounded and, while the Iraqis have not disclosed their military casualties, witnesses have reported that private houses in Basra are being turned into makeshift morgues because the hospitals are full.

Iraqi communiques gave few details of the fighting other than to say that their forces had repelled “several” Iranian attempts to advance toward Basra. But, whereas previous communiques spoke of fighting southeast of Fish Lake, Saturday’s statement said that the Iranians had been contained south of the lake, a nuance which could mean the Iranians have succeeded in extending their bridgehead westward closer to Basra, analysts said.

Regulars May Be Involved

Significantly, the communiques also spoke of inflicting heavy casualties on both Iranian Revolutionary Guards divisions and armored brigades of the regular Iranian army. Until now, the Iraqis had been reporting that only Revolutionary Guards were involved in the assault. Western military experts here said that if regular army troops are being brought up behind the Revolutionary Guards to hold the territory they have captured, it could mean that the Iranians are trying to position themselves for a determined push on Basra.

Indeed, although Tehran has not yet formally announced it, some Western diplomats in Baghdad now think that what began as an attempt to open a second Iranian bridgehead in the south may have turned into the start of Iran’s long-threatened “final offensive.”

‘I Think it Has Come’

“If it succeeds to the point where the Iranians can break through and push toward Basra, they will announce the final offensive. If it fails, they won’t,” one Western envoy said.

“For all the talk that a final offensive would never come, I think it has come,” the envoy added. “This is it, or however much of it the Iranians are capable of mounting.”

Tehran has described the current fighting as a “prelude” to its final offensive aimed at winning the war, started nearly 6 1/2 years ago when Iraq attacked Iran in a dispute over the Shatt al Arab, in one decisive blow.

Western military analysts believe that Iran has neither the armor nor the logistical capability to launch such a final attack and thus has narrowed its focus to Basra.

The Iraqis believe this as well, and thus the defenses around Basra have been beefed up to the point where most analysts also doubt that Iran can breach them.

Psychological Victory

Still, no matter how the battle ends, the Iranians have already scored a major psychological victory, the analysts added.

Last month, when the Iraqis handily defeated an earlier Iranian attempt to cross the Shatt al Arab a few miles southeast of the present fighting, it was hailed here as proof that the Iranians were no longer capable of mounting any major offensive, let alone the “final” one. But the latest offensive, which the Iraqis have been much more hard pressed to contain, has deflated those boasts and is likely to have a profound effect on the deliberations of Arab leaders when they meet in Kuwait later this month at an Islamic summit conference.

“If the Iranians can keep this up, the Iraqis won’t be able to go to the summit as victors,” one diplomat noted. “It is very serious for them.”

Times staff writer Charles P. Wallace contributed to this story from Nicosia, Cyprus.