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International media report Camp Liberty rocket attack

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NCRI – A number of international media outlets have reported the terrorist rocket attack carried out on Monday night against members of the main Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) in Camp Liberty, near the Iraqi capital.

Excerpts from Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-crisis-iraq-airport-idUSL8N19Q3V1

Iranian dissidents say Baghdad camp shelled, more than 40 hurt

Monday, 4 July 2016 23:38 GMT

BAGHDAD, July 4 (Reuters) – A camp for Iranian dissidents near Baghdad’s international airport was shelled on Monday, wounding more than 40 residents, the opposition People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) said.

“According to reports from Camp Liberty, as of midnight tonight, more than 40 residents were wounded or injured in the missile attack on the camp,” Shahin Gobadi, a Paris-based PMOI spokesman, said in a statement.

The bombardment caused major destruction in the camp, including fires and deep craters, Gobadi added.

Another PMOI spokesman, Shahriar Kia, said earlier that the group suspected “Iraqi groups affiliated with the Iranian” government were responsible for the shelling.

A witness who lives near the airport heard 20 to 30 explosions that a security source said was a bombardment targeting the secured perimeter of the airport where the camp is located. It was not clear if any of the airport’s facilities were hit. Kia said more than 50 mortar rounds hit the camp.

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Excerpts from Agence France-Presse (AFP):

Rockets target Iran exiles at Iraq camp

AFP – July 5, 2016

Baghdad (AFP) – A barrage of rockets targeted a camp housing members of an Iranian opposition group near Baghdad on Monday, injuring several people, an Iraqi security spokesman and the exiles said.

The People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) members are waiting at the camp to be resettled outside the country.

The camp was targeted in a rocket attack last year that killed at least 26 people.

“A number of rockets fell on Camp Liberty,” Baghdad Operations Command spokesman Saad Maan said in a statement, referring to the camp where the PMOI members are housed.

Maan said that some 20 rockets were launched towards the camp from a truck in an area west of Baghdad, some of which fell short, wounding Iraqi civilians.

“According to reports from Camp Liberty, as of midnight tonight, more than 40 residents were wounded or injured in the missile attack on the camp,” the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the PMOI’s parent organisation, said in a statement.

The statement blamed Iran-affiliated militias for carrying out the attack.

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Excerpts from the Associated Press:

Security ordered tightened as death toll in Baghdad hits 157

BAGHDAD (AP) — As the death toll from the weekend truck bombing in Baghdad climbed to 157, Iraq’s embattled prime minister ordered new security measures, including abandoning the use of bomb-detection wands that U.S. experts pronounced worthless years ago.

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Shahin Gobadi, a Paris-based spokesman for the Iranian exile group, said more than 4o residents were wounded in the rocket attack. The casualty figure could not be independently confirmed.