40yrs since the Iran-Iraq war began
GBNEWS24 DESK//
On September 22, 1980, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein sent troops into neighbouring Iran, starting an eight year war in which hundreds of thousands were killed.
One of the deadliest wars in the Middle East, it was rooted in a border dispute between the two oil producing nations.
Five years earlier, in March 1975, a deal signed in Algiers between the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein — then Iraq’s vice
president — had tried to settle the argument, reports AFP.
The Algiers accord ruled that their border ran along the centre of the Shatt al-Arab, a 200 kilometre (125 mile) long river
formed by the meeting of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and that flows into the Gulf.
But in April 1980, Baghdad accused Tehran — now the Islamic Republic of Iran, after the 1979 toppling of the Shah — of
plotting attacks.
Iraq called for the evacuation of three strategic islands in the Strait of Hormuz, claimed by both Iran and the United Arab
Emirates.
On September 17, Baghdad said the Algiers accord was null and void.
It demanded all of the Shatt al-Arab.
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