The Battle
The operation began during Christmas night of 1986 with elite frogmen of the Pasdaran crossing the lake in rubber speedboats to launch a surprise attack upon Umm al-Rasas Island. Upon landing, Iraqi searchlight operators found the frogmen. The Iranians were now totally exposed. Iraqi machine gunners opened up with a hail of bullets, killing all but a few of the Iranian force.
The following morning, 60,000 Pasdaran and Basijis crossed the Shatt al-Arab north and south of Khorramshahr in dinghies and motorized seacraft, using the cover of dawn to hide their movements. Almost immediately, the Iranians met the Iraqi defenses waiting for them on the shorelines of the island. A major drawback for the Iranians came in the form of little to no artillery support against the Iraqis. However the Iranians quickly overran Umm al-Rasas and the other islands, and they crossed them using pontoon bridges. But when they tried to move up the Shatt highway to envelop Basra from the south, they came under withering Iraqi fire.
A major drawback for the Iranians came in the form of little to no regular military support against the Iraqis once they broke out of the islands, except for limited artillery support, all of it was placed on the Iranian side of the Shatt al Arab. Fighting lasted for three days, during which the Iranian forces were pummeled the by Iraqi defenses . Iraqi troops used artillery, aircraft, and machine guns firing from prepared defenses. Iranian troops died by the thousands, their bodies littered the ground, but Iraqi troops also took considerable casualties. Iraqi casualties were only half that of Iranian losses. by the time the Iranians retreated, thousands of dead Iranian soldiers covered the landscape. Iran had lost 10,000 troops, while Iraq had lost 5,000. While Iran gained a little territory, it was in all respects a horrfying defeat.
Read more about this topic: Operation Karbala-4
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision—whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“Women’s battle for financial equality has barely been joined, much less won. Society still traditionally assigns to woman the role of money-handler rather than money-maker, and our assigned specialty is far more likely to be home economics than financial economics.”
—Paula Nelson (b. 1945)