Word: baghdad
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After months of stalemate and relative inactivity, the 4 1/2-year-old war between Iran and Iraq was on again last week with an intensity not seen since last year's bloody land battles. This time the teeming capitals of the two countries, Tehran and Baghdad, were among the targets. Iraqi jets struck Tehran and at least a dozen other Iranian cities. While Iranian artillery zeroed in on the Iraqi port city of Basra and ground forces launched an offensive in the vast Huwaiza marshes of southern Iraq, aircraft raided Baghdad. When a huge explosion shattered part of the 13-story Baghdad...
...forces had killed or wounded at least 700 enemy soldiers, charged ^ that the defending Iraqi troops had again used poison gas; the accusation could not be confirmed independently. (Most authorities agree that Iraqi forces used chemical weapons early last year in an effort to halt an Iranian advance.) Baghdad broadcast TV footage showing hundreds of dead Iranian troops in the battle zone. Even so, the Iranians did not mount the human-wave assault the Iraqis had been expecting for months, possibly because the latest offensive had limited objectives: to strengthen Iranian positions in the marshlands and threaten Iraq's highway...
Amid Iraqi broadcasts of martial music and boasts of "We will change the Huwaiza marshes into a floating graveyard," Baghdad brought up reinforcements and halted the Iranian drive. The broadcasts, in a notable departure, emphasized the roles of the Iraqi generals and other officers in the fighting. In the early days of the war, the only Iraqi singled out for praise was President Saddam Hussein, the man Ayatullah Khomeini is determined to destroy. Baghdad appeared to be trying to strengthen armed forces morale and emphasize the war's importance to the country as a whole...
...same time, an Iraqi air blockade on commercial aviation in Iranian air space was in effect. Iran vowed to reduce the Iraqi capital of Baghdad to a "pile of rubble" if the Iraqis carried out a threat to shoot down civilian airliners flying over Iran...
There are signs, however, that Iraq is suffering from internal divisions. According to rumors in Baghdad, last August the government uncovered a military plot to end the war by killing Saddam Hussein in a bomb attack. There are indications that mass executions followed...