People's Mujahedeen says Iranian forces shell camp in Iraq

Agence France Presse

October 31, 2000, Tuesday

BAGHDAD, Oct 31 - The armed Iranian opposition said Tuesday one of its camps in Iraq came under rocket attack by Iranian "agents", although the rockets fell on a surrounding residential area.

"The clerical regime attacked ... with 107mm rockets" the camp at Homayun, 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Iranian border, on Monday, the People's Mujahedeen said in a statement received here by AFP.

It reported no casualties in the camp.

"The camp's patrol units identified the location from which the rockets were launched and seized the equipment left behind by the mullahs' agents," it said, adding that the markings on the equipment and one unfired rocket were in Farsi.

The statement said this was the 102nd attack on the Mujahedeen in Iraq since 1993 and a violation of UN Security Council resolution 598, which brought an end to the Iran-Iraq war.

"It was the 12th attack on the Mujahedeen camps in southern Iraq, four of which have been on Homayun," spokesman Farid Suleimani told AFP.

On October 18, the Mujahedeen accused Iran of having fired rockets at its camp in Jalawla, 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Iranian border.

During August, the Mujahedeen reported killing or wounding "dozens" of Iranian forces in a series of attacks and ambushes conducted in border provinces of western Iran.

It has also carried out a number of mortar attacks against official targets in the capital, Tehran.

The Mujahedeen presence in Iraq, like the Iraqi opposition in Iran, is a stumbling block to the normalisation of relations between Tehran and Baghdad, who have not signed a peace treaty after the eight-year conflict between them ended in 1988.

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