Massacre at Fish Lake

TIME Correspondent Dean Brelis is the first Western print journalist who has visited the front since the Iranian invasion of Iraq two weeks ago. He traveled to the battle area on a blistering 125° day last week, soon after the Iraqi forces had repelled the first Iranian onslaught. His report:

The wolflike beard and the satanic eyes glared at you from a billboard on the outskirts of Basra. Instantly recognizable, the caricature of Khomeini has a bold red X painted over the face, as if to hold back the hated enemy. Says the Arabic writing scrawled across the neck: "Khomeini, scourge of the Muslim world."

We are on our way to the front in a small military convoy of Land Rovers. The mist rising from the Shatt al Arab waterway is steamy, the sky so luminous that it seems ready to burst into flame. There was shelling during the night from the Iranian artillery five miles away, but people seem unperturbed as they open their shops, till their fields and move cargoes along the waterway in long, canoe-shaped dhows.

The countryside teems with military activity. For several miles, in the shade of palm groves, troops are setting up encampments. As tanks are unloaded, soldiers in the turrets pull goggles down over their eyes to keep out the clouds of dust. Like umbrellas opening, tents acquire taut shapes; in their midst, a white flag with a red crescent, the symbol of a hospital, is raised. Binoculars to his eyes, a brigadier looks out toward the horizon, where he hears bursts of artillery. His or theirs? "Ours," he replies, pointing in the direction of the enemy lines. "They are getting ready to attack again. You can smell battle in the air."

From this point on, there are no paved roads, only desert track. The terrain increasingly becomes more barren, and I begin to appreciate the meaning of the old saying "hot as hell." The first battle has left its marks on the desert. One has no difficulty imagining the screams of dying men, for there are still bodies all around, partially covered now by the drifting sand. Most of the dead are Iranian soldiers, caught in a trap from which they could not escape. The Iraqis pretended to retreat, drawing the Iranian forces into what an Iraqi colonel describes as a "killing zone." He explains: "God was on our side. Just then, a fierce sandstorm arose and blinded the enemy. His tanks crashed into one another. We were already in position, our backs to the wind. It was a massacre."

The Iraqi trap was sprung near a man-made body of water called Fish Lake. For a short time, the Iranians held the pumping station that feeds river water into the lake, but they were soon beaten back by an Iraqi counterattack. Once again in Iraqi hands, the pumps are pouring thousands of gallons into Fish Lake, thereby increasing the size of the water barrier against an enemy armored thrust.