Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Tension has been increased in Southwest Asia as well-owing to a sharp deterioration in Iraqi-Iranian relations. Just like any other part of the world, the Persian Gulf is the sphere of interest of the countries located there. No one has the right to interfere in their affairs. It is imperative to bring this crisis to the earliest political settlement through negotiations between the warring sides...
Iraq now has uncontested control of Khorramshahr, up to the banks of the Karun River. But the seemingly endless rows of pockmarked or gutted houses provide vivid proof that the door-to-door fighting was bitter and bloody. Iraqi soldiers recount with incredulity how Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's zealous guardsmen, after their ammunition was exhausted, persisted in fighting to the death with sticks and knives. Said an Iraqi major who conducted some of the mop-up operations: "They were crazy. Many of them wore a gold key around their necks. They said they were told by Khomeini that...
Pushed across the Karun River by the Iraqi onslaught, some Revolutionary Guards tried to sneak back under cover of darkness to set up sniper posts and slay as many Iraqi soldiers as they could, until they were flushed out. The Iraqis say they have now set up security patrols that will shoot anything that moves on the banks of the Karun. Boasts a brigadier general: "Not even a rat can get across the water...
Along the bumpy roads leading from the Iraqi border to Khorramshahr, trees and broken telephone poles are strewn alongside the wreckage of burnt vehicles. At Khorramshahr's gutted railroad station, Iraqi soldiers use wall portraits of Ayatullah Khomeini for target practice. At the huge port sprawling along the Shatt al Arab, stacks of mammoth loading containers, stripped of their spoils by Iraqi invaders, are tangled with rusted steel pipes and charred, broken cranes. In makeshift barracks built under pylons, a few off-duty soldiers nap or thumb through magazines to pass the idle time...
...roof of an abandoned post office at the edge of the Karun River, Iraqi soldiers point to Iranian outposts a few hundred yards away. In the distance, thick plumes of smoke arise from the burning oil refinery at Abadan. An Iraqi private describes how the remaining Iranian defenders have split into three-and four-man sniper squads. Some of the squads have attempted "hit and run" mortar assaults from the south bank of the Karun. An Iraqi general predicts that Abadan could fall within a week, depending on the intransigence of the Iranian holdouts and the willingness of the Iraqis...