‘Large Naval Target’ Will Swim No Longer

TEHRAN — Iran conceded Wednesday that Iraqi planes have hit a “large naval target” near its coast. But it said that the victim was no maritime vessel.

The official Iranian news agency said an air-launched Iraqi missile scored an accurate hit on a 40-foot-long whale in the Persian Gulf, off the Iranian town of Bandar Deylam.

“Iraqi planes apparently took the whale for the ‘large naval target’ which the Iraqi regime so often claims to have hit in the gulf,” the report said in a sarcastic reference to gulf war terminology for oil tankers and other merchant ships.

“Local marine life officials say that a large number of the species have been killed by Iraqi rockets in the course of the imposed war,” it added. “The Iraqi regime has made the Persian Gulf waters unsafe for marine life.”