News – April 19, 1988 – CBS World News Roundup – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
News from the Persian Gulf, this day in 1988. French Navy officials alerted American war ships in the Persian Gulf that three mines were spotted in the waters off Quatar. The Navy took evasive action as well as alerting tankers in the area of avoid that part of the gulf. The Iranian action was in retaliation for the showdown which took place a day earlier. Operation Praying Mantis was an attack on 18 April 1988 by the United States Armed Forces within Iranian territorial waters in retaliation for the Iranian naval mining of the Persian Gulf during the Iran–Iraq War and the subsequent damage to an American warship.
On 14 April, the guided missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine while deployed in the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Earnest Will, the 1987–88 convoy missions in which U.S. warships escorted reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers to protect them from Iranian attacks. The explosion blew a 4.5 m (15-foot) hole in the Samuel B. Roberts’s hull and nearly sank it. The crew saved their ship with no loss of life, and the Samuel B. Roberts was towed to Dubai, United Arab Emirates on 16 April. After the mining, U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) divers recovered other mines in the area. When the serial numbers were found to match those of mines seized along with the Iran Ajr the previous September, U.S. military officials planned a retaliatory operation against Iranian targets in the Persian Gulf.
The attack by the U.S. helped pressure Iran to agree to a ceasefire with Iraq later that summer, ending the eight-year conflict between the Persian Gulf neighbors.
In other news, it was week number 3 for a hijacked Kuwaiti airliner. Kuwait Airways Flight 422 was a Boeing 747 jumbo jet hijacked en route from Bangkok, Thailand, to Kuwait on 5 April 1988, leading to a hostage crisis that lasted 16 days and encompassed three continents. The hijacking was carried out by several Lebanese guerillas who demanded the release of 17 Shi’ite Muslim prisoners being held by Kuwait for their role in the 1983 Kuwait bombings. During the incident the flight, initially forced to land in Iran, traveled 3,200 mi (5,100 km) from Mashhad in northeastern Iran to Larnaca, Cyprus, and finally to Algiers.
Word from Algiers earlier this morning was some movement between hijackers and negotiators, although no one knew what it all meant. Still, the drama was continuing to drag on.
And the Democratic Presidential hopefuls were slugging it out over primaries which were held the day before. The winner was emerging as Michael Dukakis, but nobody was willing to give in quite yet.
And along with the continuing drama in the Persian Gulf, that’s a little of what went on, this April 19, 1988 as presented by The CBS World News Roundup.
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