1.
GV Iraqi rocket launchers in action (2 shots)
0.21

2.
GV Iraqi artillery firing
0.26

3.
GV PAN Iraqi tank
0.34

4.
SCU Dead Iranian soldiers (2 shots)
0.40

5.
Wounded Iraqi soldier being loaded into ambulance
0.43

6.
GV Iraqi troops greeting President Saddam Hussein
0.51

7.
SCU Hussein speaking to troops
0.56

8.
GV Captured Iranian troops (2 shots)
1.10

9.
CU PULL BACK TO GV Captured Iranian tanks (3 shots) with crews squatting beside them
1.36




Initials EC



EUROVISION TELERECORDING

Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: INTRODUCTION: The crucial battle for the Iranian oil province of Khuzestan entered its second week today (12 January) with both sides claiming major advance, but no real victory for either.

SYNOPSIS: These Iraqi forces said they killed hundreds of Iranian troops during several days of heavy fighting which followed Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr's decision to try to break the stalemate in the four-month-old war. And their government on Sunday (11 January) branded the Iranian counter-offensive a fiasco. But Iran says it is driving the Iraqis back to their own border, and has lodged its own claim for hundreds of enemy dead. The Iraqis say that all Iranian attempts to break the occupation of the oil province of Khuzestan have been repulsed.

But the Iraqis do admit to heavy casualties.

Iraq's President Hussein has been to the front - and so has President Bani-Sadr- a sign of just how seriously both leaders view the current phase of the war.

The Iraqis claimed on Saturday (10 January) to have put an entire Iranian armoured division out of action. Observers believe that one reason for the ferocity of the fighting, which has raged along four major fronts, is that Iraqi forces units of regular Iranian troops for the first time. But, whatever the military outcome, political moves are still deadlocked. Iran refuses to negotiate while Iraqi troops remain on its soil. And Iraq refuses to withdraw until its demands for control over the Shatt Al-Arab waterway and several other areas have been conceded.