Forty Years Ago, September 25, 1980: War Intensifies

Iraqi planes also set fire to part of Iran’s main oil terminal at Kharg island and Iranian oil ministry officials said oil exports from it were being suspended for the present.

Iraq claimed its ground forces made “substantial thrusts” into western Iran along a 500-km invasion front, pushing 16 km beyond a northern city on a key road to Teheran. As the air, sea and land war between the two Persian Gulf oil giants intensified, threatening global petroleum lifelines, several countries advised their citizens to leave the war-torn areas of the two countries. Iraq and Iran hammered at each other’s oil installations at the head of the Gulf while invading Iraqi forces pushed forward on three fronts. Also hit by an Iraqi airstrike was a petrochemical complex being built by a Japanese consortium at Bandar Khomeini, east of Abadan. Iraqi planes also set fire to part of Iran’s main oil terminal at Kharg island and Iranian oil ministry officials said oil exports from it were being suspended for the present.

10 Indians Killed

Amidst growing Indian worry about the future of its oil supplies, reports have reached New Delhi that 10 Indians have been killed and 25 injured in an Iranian air attack on Basra. The reports received by the Foreign Office from the Indian Embassy in Baghdad suggest that the Indians who have been killed or injured in yesterday’s air raid were working as construction hands with an Iraqi firm, Al-Shirwai Contracting Company. The injured have been admitted in the Al-Jamuriah hospital in Basra.

CM’s Abuses Media

Karnataka Chief Minister Gundu Rao has described journalists as “curs” and accused them of taking bribes and playing mischief. Referring to reports in the press about hurling of chappals at him in Gadag, he told a public meeting in Mangalore that journalists must “drown themselves either in the Arabian Sea or in the Bay of Bengal instead of living such a contemptible life”. The CM said that nobody could survive after attacking him with chappals.

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