Build Air Raid Shelters Against Iraqi Raids, Iranian Citizens Urged

Iran’s top war spokesman Friday urged civilians to build air raid shelters as protection against Iraqi jet strikes so the Iranian military would be free to concentrate on its push toward the Iraqi port of Basra.

The advice was given as Iraqi warplanes hit eight Iranian cities. Iran struck back in the air and on the ground.

Hashemi Rafsanjani, spokesman for Iran’s Supreme Defense Council as well as Speaker of Parliament, told a mass prayer meeting in Tehran that “simple, easy-to-build shelters should be used” during Iraqi air strikes.

To Ease Pressure

“There should be general cooperation in the country so that we won’t be under pressure at the rear and won’t have to draw in our horns in the war for these problems,” he said.

On the war front itself, Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency said Iranian forces ambushed Iraqi troops on the west bank of Fish Lake, a large artificial lake just west of the frontier.

It said 2,000 casualties inflicted in battles that began late Thursday included members of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s personal guard. Iran says it will continue the war, which began in September, 1980, until Hussein is driven from office.

Iraq also reported heavy fighting in the area but said its forces repulsed the Iranians, inflicting “massive” losses in men and equipment.

Groups ‘Wiped Out’

“Several enemy groups attempting to approach Iraqi units in this sector were almost wiped out, with the remainder fleeing,” the official Iraqi News Agency reported.

“Iraq is facing a serious dilemma now,” Rafsanjani told the prayer meeting in Tehran. “It has to either pull back its forces and set up its defenses farther back, forgetting about the territory, or to keep the territory and expend its forces as much as necessary.”

Baghdad has opted for the latter and has brought about 120 brigades--out of 192 in Iraq’s army--to the operational area east of Basra in the past 20 days, he said. An Iraqi brigade normally has 3,000 men.

Artillery Targets

Iran’s national news agency, IRNA, said Iranian artillery bombarded targets in the port of Umm Qasr near Iraq’s border with Kuwait, and in Amarah, 100 miles north of Basra, Iraq’s second largest city.

It said the shelling halted movements of Iraqi armored and supply columns on the road linking Umm al Qasr and Basra.

Diplomats in the region believe Iran is trying to form a bridgehead near Basra before breaking out in an effort to cut the city’s road links with Kuwait and Baghdad, a move that effectively could isolate southern Iraq from the heartland.

Basra, with a population of about 1 million, has been the focus of an Iranian thrust launched on Jan. 9.

Eight Cities Bombed

A Baghdad military spokesman said Iraqi jets hit eight Iranian cities Friday. Iran said its fighter-bombers blasted the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah.

IRNA, quoting a military communique, said scores of civilians were killed and injured in Iraqi bombing raids on residential areas in the western cities of Khorramabad, Borujerd, Arak, Dezful, Bakhtaran and Ilam.

Baghdad said Iraqi jets also attacked the holy Shia Muslim center of Qom, just south of Tehran. Telecommunication and oil pumping facilities were destroyed in Bakhtaran, it added.

Iraq’s ruling Baath Party newspaper, Al Thawra, said Iraq would continue to hit Iranian towns and cities until it forced Iran to reach a “comprehensive, honorable and just solution” to the war, now in its seventh year.

Military communiques issued in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, said the raids were in retaliation for “the Iranian regime’s insistence on shelling Iraqi residential areas and aggression on Iraqi borders and soil.”

‘War of the Cities’

Both sides have reported hundreds of casualties in the latest upsurge in the “war of the cities” which started after Iran launched its Basra offensive three weeks ago.

The ground and air fighting raised tensions in the region and shipping sources said the United States had increased the number of its warships in the Persian Gulf to around nine from a normal complement of five.

In Washington, Pentagon officials have said five U.S. warships have been ordered to the northern Persian Gulf and the carrier Kitty Hawk had left Subic Bay naval base in the Philippines for the Persian Gulf region.