4 Key Islands Recaptured, Iraq Says; Gulf Battle Ends

AMMAN, Jordan —  Iraq claimed a decisive victory over Iran on their southern war front Friday, saying that its forces had recaptured four strategic islands after two days of heavy fighting.

Statements from the two nations agreed on little except that the battle that had been raging south of the Iraqi city of Basra is over and that it was one of the most violent of the six-year-old Iran-Iraq War.

Iraq conceded that Iranian forces, which launched an offensive across the Shatt al Arab waterway Wednesday, had initially succeeded in capturing four islands in the river and at one point established a beachhead on the Iraqi side of the estuary. South of Basra, the river is the border between the two countries.

However, a 21-gun salute was fired in Baghdad on Friday afternoon as radio and television announced the recapture of the islands, including Umm al Rasas, which the Iranians appeared to have held in force after the initial attack.

“Enemy forces were defeated in Umm al Rasas and the Iraqi flag was hoisted high,” said a communique from the military high command. An Iraqi officer said that Iran lost more than 10,000 men in the two-day offensive.

Baghdad radio said the Iraqi 3rd Army had inflicted a “real massacre” on the Iranians and captured large quantities of weapons. On Thursday night, Baghdad television showed corpses of hundreds of Iranians, including some frogmen, lying beside barbed wire fences, according to a report from Baghdad by Reuters. Dozens of prisoners were seen being taken away in trucks.

‘Objectives Achieved’

Iran conceded that its forces had returned to their bases on the east side of the river “after achieving their objectives.” The Iranians had maintained that the attack was limited to being a “destructive raid” in retaliation for Iraqi attacks on Iranian civilian centers.

Tehran radio said the Iranians killed 3,000 Iraqi troops and wounded 6,500 others and destroyed hundreds of Iraqi tanks, armored cars and weapons.

Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency, monitored in Nicosia, Cyprus, also accused Iraq of using poison gas shells against Iranian forces, the Associated Press reported. AP quoted the news agency as saying that Iraqi gunners lobbed shells containing toxic gas into Iranian positions on the east bank of the Shatt al Arab, causing some casualties.

U.N. Charges

The United Nations has charged that the Iraqis have used chemical weapons in the war, and Iran has reported hundreds of men killed and wounded by these weapons.

AP also quoted the Iranian news agency as saying that artillery duels continued in the central and southern sectors of the 730-mile front.

President Ali Khamenei of Iran , addressing several thousand people at Friday prayers in Tehran, called the raid across the Shatt al Arab “small and limited.” But he said that Iran is ready to deal a “final and fateful blow” to the Iraqis.

Despite the level of reported casualties, it was not clear whether the Iranian assault represented a major offensive, something that has been predicted for several months since Iran deployed more than 500,000 volunteers at the front.

‘Appropriate Time’

Khamenei vowed that the long-heralded “final offensive” to end the war will be unleashed “at the appropriate time.” He added that Iran’s buildup of troops on the front will continue.

Iraq described the attack Wednesday as a two-pronged offensive, while Iran insisted that the raid had the limited objective of punishing Iraq for the deaths of more than 300 civilians in air raids in the last week.

United Press International quoted an Arab diplomat in Athens as saying that the Iraqi victory was “of some strategic importance” because if Iran had held on to Umm al Rasas, it would have gained full control of the Shatt al Arab, effectively cutting Iraq off from the Persian Gulf.

But a NATO diplomat, also in Athens, was quoted by UPI as saying, “A victory of this sort is not going to end this war, with both sides being armed and assisted from outside. The two sides have such large numbers of troops in the field by now, that this war could go on indefinitely.”