Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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They lay as they had fallen, crumpled and now frozen in death, dust-covered mounds in the flat expanse of the gray-brown desert. There were hundreds of them, Iranian infantrymen who had fought and died. A column of Iraqi tanks, their spotlights flickering through billows of thick dust, churned past the bodies toward the east; the roar of their engines blended into a continuous hum. As outgoing rounds of 130-mm artillery shook the windows of his headquarters nearby, Iraqi Major General Sultan Hashem Ahmed told a group of reporters: "There are no Iranian soldiers on Iraqi territory...
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...
...remarkably successful in its first two days. The assault troops crossed the marshes and set up positions on the banks of the Tigris; a few units even crossed the river on pontoon bridges to the vicinity of the highway between Baghdad and Basra, Iraq's second city. When the Iraqis eventually counterattacked with heavy concentrations of armor and artillery, the Iranians dug in and fought back. That they had put up a valiant struggle was demonstrated by the burned- out hulks of Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers littering the battlefield. The Iranian infantry, although well armed, carried little more...
...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...
...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...