Word: basra
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...huge Iranian oil refinery in Abadan last week. Just two miles away, Iraqi artillery units kept firing shells into the besieged port at the head of the Persian Gulf. Iraqi MiG-23s swooped overhead in bombing raids, drawing intense antiaircraft fire. One MiG-23, spewing smoke, crashed near Basra, inside Iraq. Huddled behind sandbags or in the ravaged interiors of buildings, the Iranians are conducting an incessant artillery duel with the enemy. Although Iraq held a long strip of Iranian territory (see map), the situation was different toward the north, where Iranian troops had penetrated some 18 miles into Iraq...
...Weeks of fierce house-to-house fighting between Iran's fanatical Revolutionary Guards and Iraqi infantrymen have turned it into a ghost town, as its inhabitants have fled inland to the safety of mountain camps or bolted across the contested Shatt al Arab waterway to seek refuge in Basra. On a tour of Khorramshahr last week, TIME Correspondent William Drozdiak found very few signs of life; emaciated dogs foraged for scraps in the rubble, swarthy Iraqi soldiers lounged in the shade as they listened to the echo of sporadic shelling in what was left of Abadan...
...preparation for the long rainy season that begins this month, the Iraqis continued construction of an all-weather military road linking Khuzistan's provincial capital of Ahwaz with the outskirts of Basra on the Shatt al Arab estuary. The Iraqis were also proceeding toward one of their key tactical goals: cutting off most of the supply of oil from Khuzistan to Iran's heartland by severing pipelines and inflicting heavy damage on the huge refinery at Abadan, which will take years to rebuild. As part of this strategy, the Iraqis have repeatedly shelled Dezful, nexus for most...
Despite the shrill peal of air-raid sirens regularly echoing throughout the port of Basra early last week, the absence of air strikes for four days had nurtured a languid mood among the Iraqi soldiers and civilians in the town. Troops from the front lines recounted boastful tales of Iranians fleeing before their artillery barrages, while the television pumped out scenes of Iraqi attacks to martial music and announced the claim that Ahwaz, 45 miles into Iran, had just been captured. "Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day," boasted Captain Abu Rashid, beaming proudly in his black beret and crisp green...
That bold Iranian air strike served as a sobering harbinger of Iraq's shifting fortunes in the war. We saw a number of subsequent attacks by the Phantoms on oil installations around Basra. Swooping in low to avoid radar detection, they dodged Iraqi efforts to bring them down with Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles (SAMS) that invariably fizzled off in erratic curves and exploded aimlessly in the desert dust. Soon there was evidence that the ground war was also beginning to go less well than the Iraqis had anticipated. Iraqi ground forces had staked early claims to victory...