Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Though a breakthrough continued to elude them, Iraqi forces were tightening a noose around the ports of Khorramshahr and Abadan on the bank of the Shatt al Arab waterway. Buttressed by batteries of 130-mm artillery, an estimated 9,000 Iraqi infantrymen, using three pontoon bridges, succeeded in crossing the Karun River. Their military command declared it "Iraq's largest amphibious assault ever." From that bridgehead Iraqi tanks fanned southward to surround both Khorramshahr and Abadan. The Iranians charged that the Iraqis bombarded both cities with artillery and with surface-to-surface missiles. Eyewitnesses said the carnage among civilians...
...Iraqi artillery barrages were primarily designed to drive out the civilian defenders who have backed up the Iranian armed forces with guerrilla operations. The bombardment, in fact, set off a mass exodus from the Khorramshahr-Abadan area. More than 300,000 people sought refuge in the small town of Shadegan, 20 miles to the northeast. Late in the week, Iraqi forces captured Abadan's radio station, which is almost two miles outside the city, but it was not immediately clear whether the Iraqis would choose to lay a prolonged siege around the burning city and thus spare themselves infantry...
...strangest aspects of the war was the failure of either side to issue comprehensive casualty figures. But foreign observers judged the toll to be large. With most Iranian attacks aimed at military and industrial targets, civilian deaths in Iraq were probably lower than those in Iran, where Iraqi planes and artillery have indiscriminately bombarded residential areas. Tehran claimed that more than 130 schoolchildren were killed by Iraqi bombs in Kermanshah...
...drab architecture and numerous construction projects, Baghdad these days bears no resemblance to the legendary home of Harun al Rashid and A Thousand and One Nights. Although the battlefronts along the Shaft al Arab are more than 300 miles away, Iranian aircraft have brought the war to the Iraqi capital with repeated bombing raids against military and industrial targets. TIME Middle East Bureau Chief William Stewart and Correspondent Adam Zagorin report on the mood of the city...
...clear the streets when the sirens begin to wail and pedestrians crowd into underground shelters. Many of the concrete shelters are new or still under construction; they contain no food but often have water storage tanks. The atmosphere in air raid shelters is frequently relaxed even if, as one Iraqi insisted, the shelters are considered essential not only as protection against Iran "but especially against Israel, which might attack us at any minute...