Word: huwaiza
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...timing of the assault was hardly unexpected. For the past two years the Iranian army has launched a major rainy-season offensive across the marshlands of Al Huwaiza, north of the Iraqi city of Basra on the Shatt al Arab waterway. This year, on the anniversary of the day the Ayatullah Khomeini took power in 1979, the Iranians struck again. In the past, superior Iraqi armor and air power have repulsed waves of often youthful Iranian invaders. This time Iranian troops undertook a surprise offensive farther south, enabling Iran to claim at least a momentary psychological victory...
...first used gas against Iranian troops last year, denied the new accusations. Although U.S. intelligence sources were convinced that Baghdad was guilty, they found it difficult to pin down where the wounded Iranians being treated in Western Europe had been exposed to gas. Iranian troops driving deep into the Huwaiza marshes in western Iraq two weeks ago were equipped with gas masks; Western observers of the aftermath of the struggle reported that none of the dead were wearing the masks. Nor did they show signs of having been exposed to toxic agents. While denying that chemical weapons were brought...
Thus did a vaunted Iranian offensive come to an end last week, crushed by the weight of Iraqi firepower in the desert strip between the Tigris River and the Huwaiza marshes. Thousands of Iranian and Iraqi troops had been killed during the week-long assault; even so, there was no indication that the latest flare- up in the 4 1/2-year-old gulf war had brought the conflict any closer to a solution...
Nonetheless, Iraq began to celebrate as soon as War Communique 1774 announced that its forces "had achieved victory over the Iranian invaders in the Huwaiza marshes in a unique epic of warfare." Schools and offices closed, and city streets soon filled with dancing, chanting throngs. In smaller towns, crowds marched to government offices to hear local leaders deliver speeches. The festivities were filmed and televised late into the night, scenes of celebration alternating with views of the mangled Iranian dead...
...second battle of the Huwaiza marshes ended much as had the first one a year ago, though the two encounters were otherwise dissimilar. In the first confrontation, the Iranians had attempted to prevail by sheer weight of numbers, throwing thousands of relatively untrained Revolutionary Guards into the fray. This year, by contrast, the assault troops were disciplined and well equipped; they wore boots and carried German-made gas masks. Their aim was to break through the Iraqi defense lines and then hold out against a counterattack, and for several days they did exactly that...