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This is a list of aviation-related events in 1988.
April
May
The deadliest crash of this year was Iran Air Flight 655, an Airbus A300 which was shot down over the Strait of Hormuz on 3 July, killing all 290 people on board. Later that year, a terrorist bomb exploded aboard Pan Am Flight 103, a Boeing 747 which then crashed into Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December, killing all 259 people on board as well as 11 on the ground; this disaster may have been aided by Iran in reaction to the shootdown of Flight 655 not six months earlier. [53]
On June 19, 1988, the NLA launched its offensive entitled Chetel Setareh or "40 Stars" in which twenty-two organized brigades of Mojahedin recaptured the city of Mehran, which the regime had wrested from Iraqi control after the Mojahedin had set up its "provisional government" there. The Mojahedin claimed that absolutely no Iraqi soldiers participated in this operation, and Iraqi Culture and Information Minister, Latif Nusayyif Jasim, later denied that Iraq had deployed air units to help the NLA or had used chemical weapons to drive the Islamic Republic's troops from Mehran.