TOO MANY ZEROS

The agreement by the belligerents in the Iran-Iraq war to cease air and artillery bombardments of civilian towns, responding to an appeal by the United Nations, is the first time in the 45 month old conflict that both combatants have ever heeded any of the many appeals to them to modify the savage fighting between them. The agreement, if it holds, brings to a close a recent period in which hundreds of civilians on both sides have been killed and injured in cross border shelling and bombing raids. The strikes began earlier this month with an Iraqi air raid on the Iranian border town of Baneh, in which, claimed the Iranians, more than three hundred people were killed and three hundred wounded. Iran retaliated by shelling Basra and five other Iraqi border towns.