The World - News from June 4, 1987

Iran launched a new offensive in its war against Iraq, seizing three strategic heights and killing or wounding 800 Iraqi soldiers, Iran’s national news agency reported. It said Iranian forces captured more than eight square miles of Iraqi territory on the central front, opposite Iran’s Ilam province. In Baghdad, a military spokesman dismissed the Iranian reports as exaggerated. He said the Iraqis “wiped out most of the attackers.” The contradictory claims could not be checked out because Western news agencies are barred from combat areas.