People's Mujahedeen says Iranian forces shell camp in Iraq

Agence France Presse
October 18, 2000

BAGHDAD, Oct 18 - The armed Iranian opposition said one of its camps in Iraq came under rocket attack by Iranian "agents" on Wednesday, although the rockets fell on a surrounding residential area.

"The mullahs' regime attacked with 107mm rockets" the camp at Jalawla, 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the Iranian border, the People's Mujahedeen said in a statement received here by AFP.

It reported no casualties in the camp, but could not rule out wounded among Iraqis living nearby.

The Mujaheeden noted that the attack came just three days after a visit to Baghdad by Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi on a mission to normalise relations between the two neighbours.

The statement said this was the 101st attack on the Mujahedeen in Iraq since 1993 and a violaiton of UN security council resolution 598, which brought an end to the Iran-Iraq war.

"Experts from the Mujahedeen movement are now examining the circumstances of the attack which might have injured Iraqis leaving near the camp," spokesman Farid Suleimani told AFP.

During August, the Mujahedeen reported killing or wounding "dozens" of Iranian forces in a series of attacks and ambushes it 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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