September 3, 1987 – The Persian Gulf Tanker War – Reprisals and Tit-For-Tats

September 3, 1987 – CBS World News Roundup – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –

September 3, 1987 – The Iran-Iraq War was heating up again – with Iraqis mounting reprisals against Iranian attacks on shipping. This day it was a Panamanian-registered tanker, hit and sunk by Iraqi missiles, killing two crewmen. The attack was confirmed as well as an Iraqi claim it struck yet another tanker this day. All this, amid disclosures that another convoy was on its way out of the Persian Gulf, this time under protection of three U.S. warships. Iran said reprisals would continue; blow by blow in a calculated way. Earlier in the day, a Japanese Tanker was attacked and there were reports that two crewmen were injured. The only safe ships at the moment were the ones under U.S. protection.

Reports surfaced that U.S. intelligence planes were routinely supplying information to Iraq. And the war kept right on going.

Meanwhile, the trial of Matthias Rust was heading into the penalty phase – the German teenager caught buzzing Red Square in his small single-engine plane with witnesses claiming he buzzed visitors to Red Square as low as ten feet above their heads. The teenager – sentencing was expected to be some 4 years at hard labor.

Strikes going on at the Hyundai plant in South Korea received fresh support as tens of thousands of workers staged rallies all over South Korea, primarily to protest the death of a 22 year-old worker, run over by a van which plowed into a crowd of employees demanding higher pay. The strikers were defying a government ban on protests.

And firefighters were hard-pressed for relief battling hundreds of wildfires in seven Western states. Relief came in the way of fewer lightning strikes overnight – it was hoped the let-up would turn around a devastating fire season.

And that’s just a little of what went on, this September 3, 1987 as reported by the CBS World News Roundup.

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