The World - News from March 21, 1988

Iran charged that Iraq killed 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in poison gas attacks while trying to blunt an Iranian offensive in northeastern Iraq. Many of the Kurds have been rebelling against Baghdad for years, and Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency said the poison gas was used “to prevent the people from joining Iranian combatants.” There was no response from Baghdad to the charge, but the Iraqi News Agency said the army’s 2nd Corps repulsed an overnight Iranian assault in the central sector of the battlefront, killing or wounding 1,200 soldiers. Meanwhile, Iran’s supreme ruler, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, ruled out any peace settlement in the 7 1/2-year-old war. He said in a televised address that Iran will press for “final victory.”