Word: iraqis
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Still, Iraqi defenders last week fought the Iranian offensive to a blood- drenched standstill. Some 60,000 Iranian troops remained dug in six miles east of the heavily fortified earthenwork defenses, known as the "wall of steel," that surround the city. The Iranian attackers were under constant bombardment by the superior air- and fire-power of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces. The wounded were said to number 15,000 for the Iraqis and 45,000 for the Iranians. Since Iran began its latest series of attacks on Christmas Eve, an estimated total of 30,000 combatants have perished...
...siege of Basra seemed to have turned up the pressure considerably on the Iraqi government. In a Baghdad radio address, Saddam referred to Khomeini's "human wave" assaults, accusing the Iranian leader of "appealing, as if the devil were between his eyes, for further men to push into the inferno of death." He repeated his offer for a peace settlement, which the Iranian government promptly rejected. Meanwhile, a government-controlled newspaper published a decree by the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council asking for volunteers aged 14 through 25 to enlist in the army...
Marines guarding the presidential palace fire on protesting farmers, and talks with Communist rebels collapse. -- In Beirut more Americans are taken hostage in a dramatic mass kidnaping following the arrest of a suspected terrorist in West Germany. -- Thousands flee north as Iranian shellfire turns the Iraqi port city of Basra into a pockmarked wasteland...
...after day the two sides launched aerial and missile attacks on each other's cities. In a gesture that some observers interpreted as a sign of President Saddam Hussein's rising desperation, Iraqi warplanes repeatedly raided the Iranian holy city of Qum, a campaign calculated to infuriate the aging and increasingly frail ruler of the Islamic Republic. Reports continued to circulate in the West last week that Khomeini, 86, has been confined to bed for the past month and is extremely ill, perhaps near death...
...November it became known that Washington was covertly shipping arms to Iran, though this weaponry does not appear to have played a significant role in the recent fighting. Later there were reports that Washington had provided Baghdad with certain military intelligence in order to avert the possibility of an Iraqi collapse. Finally there were allegations last week that the U.S. had given such intelligence information to both Iran and Iraq and that some of it had been deliberately distorted in an effort to prevent either side from scoring a victory...