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Rocket barrage on Iran exile camp near Baghdad kills 23, radical Shiite militia claims attack

Xinhua, October 30, 2015 Adjust font size:

A rocket barrage which targeted an exile Iranian opposition group in a base near Baghdad airport on Thursday evening killed at least 23, according to the group on Friday, while an Iranian-backed radical Shiite militia claimed responsibility for the attack.

A statement issued by the opposition group said that at 7:40 p.m. (1640 GMT) over 80 rockets from different kinds struck Camp Hurriya (or Liberty), which is a former U.S. military base, located near the Baghdad airport in the southwest of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

It said that many caravans in the camp were destroyed or burned by the barrage, which also destroyed or brought down many concrete walls that were set up in the camp to protect the caravans.

Late on Thursday, an Interior Mininstry source told Xinhua that some 25 Katyusha rockets struck the camp, citing initial reports.

The rockets were fired from al-Bakriyah district in western Baghdad, the source said, adding that there were no immediate reports about casualties among the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), which is also known as Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO).

The rocket barrage did not affect the flight movement in Baghdad airport, as the barrage occurred outside the airport perimeter, the source said.

On Friday, the leader of al-Mukhtar Army, an Iraqi radical Shiite militia, claimed the attack on the Iranian exiled group, saying that 25 were killed and some 200 others wounded.

"We warned the members of this terrorist organization to leave Iraq as soon as possible. If they don't quickly leave the Iraqi land, there will be similar attacks," the militia leader Wathiq al-Battat was quoted as saying by Fars News Agency, which is close to Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The Iranian exiles have been relocated two years ago under the supervision of the UN mission in Iraq from their former base Camp Ashraf near the city of Khalis, some 60 km northeast of Baghdad, to Camp Hurriya.

The UN frequently urged the international community to speed up its efforts to resettle the Iranian exiles in third countries.

The PMOI was founded in 1965 in opposition to the shah of Iran and subsequently fought to oust the Islamic regime which took power in the 1979 revolution.

The group fled to Iraq in 1986, and got permission from Iran's foe Saddam Hussein to set up Camp Ashraf in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala near the Iranian border.

After the PMOI fighters were disarmed following the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq, the camp remained under the protection of the U.S. military police for five years before the Iraqi government took over the security responsibility in the camp.

In late 2011, the Iraqi government and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq struck a deal to move the camp residents in Diyala province to Baghdad temporarily until the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) gets the refugees resettled in a third country.

Ties between the Shiite Muslim country of Iran and the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq have been picked up considerably since the ouster of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime in a U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Iraq and Iran fought a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s, resulting in the loss of one million lives. Endit