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1st LD: Rocket barrage hits area near Baghdad airport

Xinhua, July 5, 2016 Adjust font size:

A rocket barrage hit a place near Baghdad international airport on Monday, targeting a camp housing an exile Iranian opposition group, a police source said.

There were no immediate reports about casualties among the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), it said, adding that some of the rockets missed their targets and hit a village near Ameriyah district in western Baghdad, wounding several civilians.

Around 14 rocket strikes were heard near the airport in southwestern Baghdad, where Camp Hurriya was located, the source said on condition of anonymity.

The security forces later found a truck used as the rocket launcher in Agargouf area in western Baghdad, it said.

A similar attack occurred on Oct. 29, 2015, killing at least 26 Iranian exiles when some 25 Katyusha rockets were fired on the camp.

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

The United Nations has 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 United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq struck a deal to move the camp residents in Diyala province to Baghdad temporarily until the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees gets the refugees resettled in a third country. Endit