Streets Deserted, Sandbags Piled High : Basra Continuing to Pay the Price of a Long War

BASRA, Iraq â€”  Sandbags were piled high around houses and shops, with few windows visible. Once again battered Basra wore the veil of a city at war.

Iran shelled the city heavily Wednesday, and a local doctor reported 26 people killed.

Basra, once a tranquil grove of date palms on the ancient trading routes between Europe and Asia, has borne the brunt of seven years of bitter conflict.

Iraq’s second-largest city has to pay the price of being perilously close to the war front, with Iranian artillery dug in just 12 miles away.

The Iranian gunners have badly scarred Basra. Few houses have survived intact. Some residents have fled.

Before the war flared in 1980, Basra boasted a million people. Now authorities are loath to offer figures.

Streets were deserted when the Iraqi government took a group of foreign correspondents for a tour of the city Wednesday. Residents said most people were hiding in shelters and cellars.

They said that about 300 shells fell on the city in the bombardment, one of the heaviest of the war. On the worst day, earlier this year, an estimated 1,000 shells fell.

The Iranians began the shelling in retaliation for a welter of Iraqi attacks in the last week on oil installations and tankers in the Persian Gulf and economic targets on land.

Dr. Ali Wajeeh was at a teaching hospital treating victims of the shelling when he received an urgent call to hurry home. A shell had landed on his house.

“When I got there, I found nothing but rubble,� the young surgeon said.

His 25-year-old sister was dead and his mother badly wounded in the stomach, Wajeeh said. His two brothers had head injuries and his sister-in-law was hit in both arms.

“Even my young brother, who telephoned me at the hospital, had a head injury from a shell that fell on his school,� the doctor added.

Dr. Akram Hassan said his home was also destroyed when 15 rockets hit the suburb where he lives. Six people died and dozens were injured, he said.

The hospital chief, Dr. Adil Mahdi Mansouri, said 26 people were killed and 119 wounded by Wednesday’s shelling.

He said his staff treated 120 patients during the day. Dozens more were treated in Basra’s two other hospitals.

“Every suburb came under bombardment. . . . Most of the areas shelled were civilian,� he said.

Basra has long been regarded as a prime objective of the Iranians. They launched a major offensive last December to try to take the city but were kept out by a ring of fortifications. Most Basrans expect Iran to try again.