Word: compounds
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...time to move now seemed ripe. An International Red Cross visit had determined that all 50 hostages seized at the embassy were still being held in the compound. U.S. planners had learned that the number of militants guarding the captives had declined. Soon the protective darkness of the nights would shorten, and the desert temperatures would soar by day, making it even more difficult for the helicopters to operate in the hot, light air. The period for best operational conditions was narrowing fast. On Thursday, with the Common Market Foreign Ministers having just bowed to Carter's pleas for allied...
...Gradually, however, the outlines of the plan became clear. The helicopters were to have carried the commandos to a second staging site, named Mountain Hideout, just outside of Tehran, but concealed from Iranian radar and defense forces by mountains. Some of the rescuers were to slip into the embassy compound in trucks?although where the vehicles would come from remained a mystery. At a prearranged time, the rescuers were to disable the unsuspecting guards, presumably with gunfire and some kind of chemical weapon, just as the choppers landed on the embassy rooftops. The helicopters would then carry the hostages...
...Saturday the militants took new steps to make sure that no second rescue mission could work any better than had the ill-starred first attempt. They announced that the hostages were being taken out of the compound and sent individually to widely scattered?and undisclosed?new sites...
...world's latest refugee saga began three weeks ago, when an estimated 10,800 Cubans jammed into the Peruvian embassy compound in Havana seeking political asylum after guards were temporarily removed from the embassy's gates. The sight of these would-be exiles, demanding to leave Fidel Castro's so-called paradise, was deeply embarrassing to the Cuban President. With the world watching, he had no choice but to grant them exit visas. Eight nations eventually agreed to admit 6,250 of the exiles; the U.S. said that it would take 3,500, the largest single group...
...worst emotions of the American public in an election year. To be sure, the mission was badly conceived and badly executed, even on a technical military level. If the helicopter had landed successfully in the desert, what would the soldiers have done in confronting a sprawling embassy compound in which the hostages are widely dispersed, and guarded by 150 armed Iranian militants? Harold Brown will not tell; we can only speculate that the plan involved a considerable amount of bloodshed, and that the safe return of the hostages was no more than tentative. Moreover, the operation can only further confuse...