Archive Report
Archive Report
War-Torn Iran Facing Test
By some estimates, 665,000 Iranians have been killed or wounded in a war with Iraq that enters its seventh year Sept. 22.1 Not only is this an enormous amount of bloodshed in terms of Iran's population—the equivalent casualties for a country the size of the United States would be 3.7 million—but among the maimed and dead are “volunteers” aged 12 to 17, recruited by Iran's clergy and sent weaponless against Iraqi armor. Often these youths were bound together by ropes in groups of 20 to prevent the fainthearted from deserting as one after another they were blown into the air by land mines. As reported by one of the few Western correspondents to reach the battle front, they wore blood-red headbands ...