Mortar attack on MKO camp in Iraq kills three

TEHRAN,June 17(MNA) – A mortar attack on the camp of Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), which is regarded by Iran as a terrorist group, killed three people in Baghdad on Saturday, police sources said, Reuters reported. The MKO said two of the camp’s residents were killed and 40 wounded in the attack. An Iraqi died when a stray mortar round hit a residential complex for Baghdad airport employees nearby. The attack targeted the MKO camp in a former U.S. military compound in western Baghdad, where Iraqi authorities relocated most of the group last year from a base given to it by Saddam. The MKO, described by some critics as a cult, moved from Iran to Iraq in the early 1980s, and fought with Saddam Hussein against Iran’s government during the Iran-Iraq war. The current Iraqi government views the group with suspicion, and U.S. and United Nations officials have been trying to resettle them abroad since 2003. But though the group’s leadership signed an agreement with the UN and Iraq last year to abandon their longtime base, Camp Ashraf, in Diyali province, the leadership seems reluctant to move the group’s members from Iraq. The group’s leadership, based in Paris, is apparently refusing to allow their tightly controlled subordinates to cooperate with the UN screening required before resettlement can be arranged. After refusing for years to leave Camp Ashraf, most of the residents began leaving in September for a temporary base. About 100 members remain. In February, eight group members were killed in a rocket attack on the temporary base, which is called Camp Hurriyah. Mojahedin Khalq leaders say they don’t want the group resettled in small numbers in many countries, but instead moved as a single group to new homes in the United States or Europe. Only about 200 people were slated to go to Albania. U.S. and UN officials say that because of lingering concern about the tendencies of a militant group that was on the U.S. list of terrorist groups from 1997 to 2012, no country will take all of them.