Iran Claims It Broke Through Iraqi Defenses

NICOSIA, Cyprus — Iran claimed Sunday that its forces broke through Iraqi defenses and seized another chunk of Iraqi territory in a weekend offensive. Iraq said it repulsed the attack and “annihilated” three Iranian divisions.

The fighting raged southwest of man-made Fish Lake, six miles east of Basra, Iraq’s second largest city and its only outlet to the Persian Gulf.

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency said “strategic Iraqi lands” were captured in an attack launched at 10 p.m. Saturday. It said 2,000 Iraqis were killed or wounded and 90 captured.

The blitz, IRNA said, “paralyzed the Iraqi enemy” before they could take any measures.

IRNA’s account was monitored in Nicosia, as were Iraqi claims. Neither side allows foreign journalists into battle areas along the 730-mile front, and independent confirmation of war claims is rarely possible.

IRNA said the region around Fish Lake was “filled with bodies of Iraqi soldiers, and ambulances are reported busy ferrying the injured.”

“The area is also littered with burnt Iraqi tanks, personnel carriers and military equipment. Smoke of the burning Iraqi equipment is billowing in the area,” IRNA said.

An Iraqi military communique, broadcast by state radio, said all three Iranian divisions involved in the thrust “were completely wiped out by the morning.”

“The fighting in the southern sector of the battle front had settled to Iraq’s favor at 10:30 a.m. this morning (Sunday),” Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Abdel-Jabbar Muhsin said.

He described the battles as “ferocious.”

The official Iraqi News Agency quoted Lt. Gen. Diauldine Jamal, commander of Iraq’s 3rd Army Corps, as saying the Iranian forces were “annihilated in an inferno prepared by the Iraqis.”

Baghdad radio shifted its programs to martial music after reporting the “treacherous and vicious” attack, launched less than 48 hours after Iran had announced the end of its 2-month-old offensive toward Basra.

Iran claimed to have captured about 60 square miles of Iraqi territory in the offensive, but three divisions of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards remained in the area.

Iraq’s information minister, Latif Jasim, declared the new Iranian attack had absolved Iraq of its Feb.19 commitment to suspend for two weeks the bombing of Iranian cities.