Iran claims to have cut Iraq off from Gulf

Press, 14 February 1986, Page 6

Iran claims to have cut Iraq off from Gulf

NZPA-Reuter Manama, Bahrain Iraq and Iran said yesterday that fighting continued in the Gulf war and an Iranian offensive code-named “Dawn 8” moved into its fourth day. Iraq said troops of its 7th Corps had forced the disorganised retreat of Iranians east of Basra, Iraq’s second-biggest city, and fighting was fierce along the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which Iranian forces crossed on Monday.

The communique made no mention of the disused Iraqi oil port of Faw, at the Shatt’s entrance to the Gulf, which Iran said its forces had occupied on Wednesday. Iranian television yesterday showed Iranian troops searching houses and relaxing in Faw, Iraq’s southern oil terminal until it was blitzed

early in the war. Viewers said the town was clearly identifiable as Faw; the film had showed oil installations and bombed-out port buildings. The television said Iranian troops moving north of the port had captured Faw’s 60-reser-voir oil-tank farm. Troops advancing from Faw had also reached the east bank of the Khawr abd Allah, another channel flowing into the Gulf some 50 km west of Shatt, a Teheran communique said. That would place them opposite Umm Qasr, the last active Gulf harbour still in Iraqi hands, where units of its small Navy are thought to be based.

Iranian domination of Khawr abd Allah would prevent Iraqi ships reaching the sea, giving rise to

an Iranian claim on Wednesday that it had cut off Iraq’s last access to the Gulf.

But a military spokesman in Bagdad said the Iranian claim was “completely baseless” and that

Iraqi troops retained full control of the northern coast of Khawr abd Allah (where the waterway bends east to form Iraq’s border with Kuwait) and its east bank.

Iraqi said its planes and helicopter gunships had flown 532 combat missions against Iranian positions and supply routes “deep inside Iranian territory.”