Clashes and explosions were reported in a camp housing Iranian exiles on Sunday, with the group claiming Iraqi troops killed more than 50 of their members, charges officials steadfastly denied.
Officials and the group offered wildly different accounts of the unrest, though, none of which could be independently confirmed.
The US swiftly condemned “the terrible events that took place at Camp Ashraf today.”
“Those found to be responsible must be held fully accountable,” Harf said.
The UN said it was trying to establish what took place and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki formed a committee to probe the incident.
In addition to the casualties, the People’s Mujahidin Organization of Iran (PMOI), about 100 of whose members were living at Camp Ashraf in Diyala Province near the Iranian border, also claimed security forces set fire to the group’s property in the camp, all of which was denied by Iraqi officials.
Local hospitals reported three Iraqi soldiers were killed and four wounded, which officials attributed to angry camp residents attacking an army brigade responsible for the camp.
However, medics did not report any casualties among Ashraf residents.
The unrest was condemned by the UN’s refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which did not assign blame for the incidents.
The UNHCR said “it appears that deadly force has been used and that a number of people have been killed or wounded.”
Earlier this year, at least eight people were killed in two mortar attacks on another camp housing the group, also known as the Mujahidin-e-Khalq (MEK).
Officials and MEK spokespeople gave totally different accounts of the latest unrest and it was not immediately clear what caused the explosions and clashes, or the extent of the casualties.
Iraqi police and medical sources said five mortars hit the camp.
A police colonel said that in the aftermath of the rockets, “some angry Ashraf residents came out and attacked the brigade protecting the camp,” killing three soldiers and wounding four in clashes.
A doctor at the main hospital in the provincial capital, Baquba, confirmed the toll.
An Iraqi official responsible for overseeing the camp said the blasts were caused not by mortars, but by oil and gas containers exploding inside Ashraf.
“Not a single soldier entered Camp Ashraf,” Haqi al-Sharifi said. “There was no attack from outside against the camp, but what seems to have happened is that some barrels of oil and gas inside Ashraf exploded. The police are investigating.”
The MEK said that the Iraqi army had entered Ashraf and killed 52 of its members in a “massacre” and set fire to property.
“Scores of PMOI members were wounded and are in critical conditions and a number have also been taken hostage,” MEK spokesman Shahriar Kia said in a statement.
Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein allowed the rebel MEK to set up the camp during his war with Iran in the 1980s.
About 3,000 MEK members were moved from Ashraf to Camp Liberty, located on a former US military base on the outskirts of Baghdad, last year, but about 100 stayed on at the old camp to deal with leftover property and goods.
Maliki’s committee began its investigation late on Sunday, according to the prime minister’s spokesman, Ali Mussawi, and was expected to report back in the coming days.
The MEK was founded in the 1960s to oppose the shah of Iran, and after the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted him, it took up arms against Iran’s clerical rulers.
It says it has now laid down its arms and is working to overthrow the Islamic regime in Iran by peaceful means.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS