Iraq
Practice Relating to Rule 11. Indiscriminate Attacks
In a message sent to the UN Secretary-General in 1984, the President of Iraq stated: “The indiscriminate Iranian bombardment of civilian targets crowded with inhabitants is a major aspect of its ceaseless aggression against Iraq.”
The Report on the Practice of Iraq states that Iraq “inclines towards intensifying the refusal of [indiscriminate] attacks in order to avoid harming civilians”, regardless of whether “such attacks … might serve a military purpose”. The report interprets this as meaning “the banning of any kind of attacks directed on the civilians”, regardless of the nature of the intended military target.
The report also cites the text of a military communiqué issued by the General Command of the Iraqi armed forces during the Iran–Iraq War stating: “The enemy has reached a maximum degree of nervousness and loss of balance that lead it to commit repeated infringements and random bombardment without any distinction.”