U.S. Copters Exchange Fire With Iran Gunboats

U.S. helicopters engaged two Iranian gunboats Tuesday after the boats attacked a tanker in the northern Persian Gulf, and Iran was reported to have suffered setbacks on two fronts in its land war with Iraq.

Pentagon officials told reporters in Washington that a pair of specially equipped helicopters from the Army’s secret “Night Stalker” unit exchanged fire with a pair of “probable” Iranian patrol boats after nightfall in the Persian Gulf,

The helicopters, which were controlled by a single U.S. Navy observation copter operating off the frigate Nicholas, responded to a distress call from the Panamanian-flag tanker Universal Monarch, which had been attacked as it steamed past Iran’s Farsi Island, Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard told reporters. Gunfire from the boats caused a fire in the tanker’s engine room, which crewmen extinguished. There were no reports of injuries on the tanker.

First Action in a Week

The helicopter-gunboat action was the first U.S.-Iranian military encounter since July 3, when an American cruiser mistakenly shot down a civilian Iranian airliner over the Strait of Hormuz. It was also the second shooting incident in the gulf involving the Army special operations helicopters, which are equipped with sophisticated night vision equipment, machine guns and rockets. Last October, the ultra-quiet copters swooped down on three Iranian gunboats laden with mines and sank them, yielding firm evidence of Iranian mine-laying operations.

The Army commando unit flying the special copters from Navy decks is known as Task Force 160, whose motto is “Death waits in the dark,” Pentagon experts said.

In other developments, Pentagon officials said Navy investigators led by Rear Adm. William M. Fogarty have completed their analysis of computer tapes drawn from the cruiser Vincennes and have returned to the Persian Gulf to complete their probe.

There, the investigators will consult with officers aboard several of the nine British warships that were operating in and around the gulf the day the Vincennes shot down the Iranian airliner, Howard told reporters.

The Navy probe also is expected to draw upon the records and tapes of civilian air traffic controllers in the region, said Pentagon officials who declined to be identified. The Vincennes, like other American ships in the region, does not regularly monitor the heavy commercial air traffic in the Persian Gulf, the officials added. But that policy may come under review in the wake of the downing of Iran Air Flight 655, they said.

Meanwhile, the Iranian news agency IRNA said that Iranian forces had pulled back from the town of Halabja in northeastern Iraq. The town was captured by Iranian forces in March.

The seizure of Halabja in the spring was not considered a strategic victory for Iran, but it cheered the Iranian government at a time when the conduct of the war had become increasingly burdensome.

The Iranians later obtained a measure of international sympathy when Iraqi forces attacked the town with poison gas and reportedly killed about 5,000 people, most of them civilians. Photographs of dead children caused a worldwide outcry against Iraq.

Iran said Tuesday that it had retreated to “new defensive positions” but neglected to say how far its troops had withdrawn. Halabja is virtually on the border between the two countries.

The other setback for Iran took place to the south. Iraq said its forces recaptured the Zubaidat area about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. The area had been held by Iran since 1982.

Iran acknowledged that heavy fighting was going on in the Zubaidat area east of Amarah. It said its bombers had attacked Iraqi troop concentrations there.

According to an Iraqi high command communique broadcast by Baghdad Radio, the area was recaptured by Presidential Guard units in a battle that lasted four hours Tuesday morning.

Iran Suffers Reverses

The war began going badly for Iran in April, when Iraqi troops took the offensive for the first time in seven years and pushed Iranian troops out of the Faw Peninsula southeast of the Iraqi port city of Basra. The area had been taken by Iran in February, 1986.

In quick succession, Iraqi forces recaptured territory east of Basra in the so-called Shalamcheh salient, which the Iranians seized last September, and Iranian rebels crossed the border in the central sector, then seized and temporarily held the town of Mehran.

Thus in four months Iraq has liberated virtually all its territory the Iranians had taken.

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Healy reported from Washington and Wallace from Nicosia.