The Iraqi delegation to the United Nations was privately but formally warned today by acting mediator for Palestine Ralph J. Bunche that Iraqi troops on the frontiers of the Jewish state are playing with fire and inviting retaliatory action on a scale similar to that suffered recently by the Egyptians in the southern desert.
Dr. Bunche told the Iraqi delegates that he had just received fuller reports of the Egyptian losses in the recent Negev fighting, and that this should act as a warning to the Iraqi Army. His information was, he told the delegates, that Egypt had lost since Oct. 14, when fighting was resumed in the south, virtually all of its front-line troops, including the personal bodyguard of King Farouk.
Furthermore, on the best of authority, Dr. Bunche was reported today to have told the Iraqi delegation here that Egypt now is virtually open to Israeli invasion whenever the Tel Aviv Government felt so inclined. Iraq might find itself in a similar position, he said, if Iraqi shelling of Israeli territory is continued.
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