Iran exiles near Baghdad attacked

BAGHDAD: A rocket attack on an Iranian exile group housed at a camp near Baghdad yesterday resulted in fatalities, a United Nations spokeswoman said, the second deadly attack on the camp this year.
“I can confirm that there was a deadly attack,” UN spokeswoman Eliana Nabaa told AFP. “We don’t have the figures but yes, people were killed and injured.”
A police colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity, put the toll at three dead and 11 wounded from six mortar blasts.
Shahriar Kia, a spokesman for members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, or the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), at Camp Liberty, said more than a dozen “missiles” hit the camp, setting fire to multiple trailers.
“There have been casualties, but I do not have a toll for now,” he told AFP. Kia criticized the United Nations for not agreeing to move Liberty residents back to their original base at Camp Ashraf near the border with Iran.
Separately, the leader of Al-Qaeda’s Iraq arm defiantly rejected an order from the terror network’s global command to scrap a merger with the organization’s Syria affiliate, according to a message purporting to be from him that was posted online Saturday.