Battle
In early February 1983, 50,000 Iranian forces attacked westward from Dezful and were confronted by 55,000 Iraqi forces. The Iranian objective was to cut off the road from Basra to Baghdad in the central sector. They the attack on a rainy day and had hoped cloud cover would shield them from Iraqi air attacks. Once the clouds lifted, Iraq conducted 150 air sorties, which generated a 3 to 1 kill ratio of Iranians to Iraqis. The Iraqis, sensing the efficacy of close air attacks, directed aerial bombings on the cities of Dezful, Ahvaz, and Khorammshahr in retribution for the Iranian Dawn 1 offensive. The Iranians continued to order up more forces, and the 92nd Armoured Division pushed forward from Dezful to rout one Iraqi armoured division and destroy another.
Read more about this topic: Operation Dawn (1983)
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“What a battle a man must fight everywhere to maintain his standing army of thoughts, and march with them in orderly array through the always hostile country! How many enemies there are to sane thinking! Every soldier has succumbed to them before he enlists for those other battles.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
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—Stefan Zweig (18811942)