Iran Tries to Bomb Home of Iraqi Leader in Deep Strike

Iraqi forces Friday drove off an Iranian warplane that flew 110 miles into Iraq and tried to bomb President Saddam Hussein’s family home north of Baghdad, the military command announced.

While maneuvering to evade Iraqi ground fire, the Iranian jet “dropped all its load of explosives indiscriminately” in the village of Ouja, just south of Tikrit, Hussein’s hometown, the official Iraqi News Agency said.

No injuries were reported in the 5:55 a.m. attack, according to the news agency. The report, monitored in Nicosia, did not say whether the Iraqi president was home at the time. It was the first time that the Iraqis have reported an attack on Hussein’s home during the nearly 8-year-old Iran-Iraq War.

The report did not say whether the U.S.-built Iranian F-4 Phantom jet was hit.

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency said its warplanes on Friday attacked military targets in three raids on Iraq, including one near Tikrit at 5:25 a.m., but it gave no other details.

The Iraqi News Agency did not explain how the Iranian plane flew undetected all the way from the border, 110 miles to the east, to attack Hussein’s home, which is 100 miles northwest of Baghdad. Military analysts said an F-4 flying at low altitudes is capable of evading detection by radar.

Meets With Council

After the attack, Hussein led a meeting of the governing Revolutionary Command Council.

An official spokesman, who was not identified by name, said the leadership decided “not to carry out a direct retaliation today . . . to help the Iranian people liberate themselves from the nightmare of these evil, charlatan rulers.”

But, he added, “Iraq will reserve its right to carry out a crushing and comprehensive retaliation at the appropriate time.” He called the Iranian attack “a flagrant violation” of a truce in the “war of the cities.”

In Tehran, Iran’s new acting commander in chief, Hashemi Rafsanjani, urged his countrymen to take the war with Iraq “more seriously.”

Rafsanjani, the Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, was appointed to the military post on Thursday by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had held it since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Rafsanjani told a prayer meeting in Tehran on Friday that there should be “no compromise, no submission and no backing down from our rights” in the war. “We should take the situation more seriously,” he told the worshipers.

Rafsanjani added: “If we back down even a bit in the war, we will sustain major losses.” He called on the armed forces to recruit more people into “war-related affairs” so that “arrogance will be deprived of its last weapon and we can prepare to face the next schemes of the world-devourers.”