Iran troops clash With Iranian Resistance in Iraq

Iran troops clash With Iranian Resistance in Iraq
Associated Press
April 14, 2003

BAGHDAD, Apr. 14 (AP) - An Iranian opposition group based in Iraq has lost 10 of its fighters in clashes with Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards who crossed into Iraq, where the group is based.

The People’s Mojahedin said that Iran’s Supreme National Security Council had ordered its revolutionary guards, intelligence forces and mercenaries to attack the group.

Ten Mojahedin were killed during the clashes in three towns on Sunday, it said.

Earlier, the group said Iranian-backed forces inside Iraq killed 18 Mojahedin members and wounded 43 others in central Iraq near the Iranian border on Thursday and Friday.

The Mojahedin want a secular government to replace the theocratic administration in Iran.

The fall of the Saddam Hussein regime has seen the Iraq-based group lose one of its main backers.

State-run Iranian television reported yesterday that "tens" of Mojahedin fighters had been killed in clashes with Iraqi fighters near Khaneqin, about 145 kilometres north of Baghdad.

A day earlier, state TV also reported fighting between Mojahedin and Iraqi fighters on Thursday and Friday in Al-Saadiyah, a desert region some 160 kilometres north of Baghdad.

It said five Iraqis were killed when one of their patrols was attacked late on Friday.

Last month the US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, warned Iran not to meddle in the Iraq war, saying Iranian-backed Shiite opposition militias inside Iraq presented a threat to US and allied troops.

Any entry of Iranian forces into Iraq could be deemed threatening by the United States.

President George Bush has grouped Iran - along with Iraq and North Korea - in an "axis of evil," and there has been intense speculation in the Middle East that Iran might be a future American military target.