Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...latest battlefield in the long, murderous war between Iran and Iraq is a 50-mile front from Dezful in Iran across the border to the Iraqi town of Amara. There, beginning on Nov. 1, an Iranian force of about 20,000, mostly fanatical Islamic Guard units and including some basij, or groups of teen-age zealots, staged a new offensive. Attacking at night to neutralize Iraq's overwhelming air superiority, and sticking to the high, steep terrain that favors Iranian manpower over Iraqi firepower, they claim to have captured 210 sq. mi. of territory, killing 6,100 Iraqi defenders...
...savagery. An estimated 200,000 soldiers from both sides have died, and 70,000 more have been taken prisoner. Yet even by those grim standards the charge was shocking: that Iran's Islamic Guards, fanatical supporters of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, have massacred substantial numbers of unarmed Iraqi prisoners...
...Khomeini regime, released photos purporting to be of one such incident. The massacre, said to have occurred last January in Bostan, a town in the southwestern province of Khuzistan, was photographed by Iranian officers sympathetic to the Mujahedin. According to the officers, Islamic Guards assembled a group of Iraqi prisoners in front of pictures of Khomeini and ordered them to chant slogans praising the Ayatullah. Several dozen Iraqis refused. They were led away, and their hands were tied behind their backs. As regular army officers watched in disbelief, an earthmover dug a large ditch. After the prisoners had been placed...
Other disgruntled Iranian officers have reported similar killings by the Islamic Guards, who fight alongside the regular army but are under the command of the Islamic clergy. Last February, a group of guards allegedly captured about 15 Iraqi soldiers in Gilan-e Gharb, an Iranian border town. As the P.O.W.s were being escorted to a makeshift detention center, a wounded Islamic Guard suddenly pointed at one of the Iraqis and yelled, "He killed Hamid!" The accused man was shot to death on the spot. The guards then killed the other prisoners with bullets and bayonets. On several occasions, the guards...
Indeed, the Islamic clergy ignores and at times even encourages the mistreatment of Iraqi P.O.W.s. The massacres are seen as a way to boost Iraqi casualty figures and, perhaps more important, to instill ferocity and brutality in the ill-trained guards for their larger mission. Most of them serve only a short time at the front before being shipped back to the cities to battle the regime's stubborn domestic opponents...