Iraq Stages Aerial Blitz, Attacks 5 Ships

Iraq’s air force reported attacks on five vessels during a “massacre” of ships in Iranian waters and sank a salvage tug Friday while apparently trying to hit a supertanker for the third time in two days.

Persian Gulf shipping executives said two crewmen were reported killed and four were wounded when an Exocet missile hit the tug Friday morning.

Lloyd’s Shipping Intelligence Service, based in London, said the tug “subsequently sank.” It was owned by the Semco Co. of Singapore but was not identified by name.

At U.N. headquarters in New York, Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar said Iran chose Mohammed Larijani, a deputy foreign minister, as its emissary for U.N. talks aimed at ending the seven-year Iran-Iraq War. He said he would meet this month with Larijani and with Iraq’s envoy, Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz.

The tug was the latest reported victim of an aerial blitz in which Iraq has claimed 11 attacks on ships in Iranian waters since Monday, including five in a 20-hour period through midday Friday. Three raids were confirmed independently.

Shipping agents said the tug apparently was near the 264,081-ton Fortuneship L, a Greek tanker chartered by Iran that was disabled by an Iraqi missile Wednesday night and hit a second time about 24 hours later.

Baghdad radio quoted a military spokesman as saying the air raids were “within the framework of our pursuit of the enemy’s targets in the gulf waters . . . and our planes have achieved the widest massacre of the enemy’s targets.” It said the attacks were on five “large maritime targets,” the term it uses for tankers.

New Offensive Planned

The attacks coincided with reports from Tehran indicating that Iran is preparing for a major new land offensive in the southern sector of the 730-mile border war front.

The Fortuneship L was carrying a load of crude oil south when hit Wednesday night and was being towed to port for unloading and repairs when the second attack occurred Thursday.

Salvage executives said the Friendship L caught fire Thursday night after one or two of the sea-skimming Exocets hit its cargo holds. Experts say crude oil tends to smother explosives but sometimes will burn.

According to available records, the five raids that Iraq claimed were the most of any one-day period since the so-called tanker war began in February, 1984. This week’s aerial blitz is the most ambitious that Iraq has reported since August, when its air force hit a dozen ships in four days.