File photo shows members of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO).
The anti-Iran terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) says Iraqi security forces have killed 44 of its roughly 100 members during clashes that erupted at a camp housing the group in eastern Iraq.
Iraqi officials and the terrorist MKO members gave conflicting reports about the clashes and explosions that took place at Camp New Iraq in the eastern Diyala Province on Sunday.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blasts and clashes at the camp.
The MKO claimed that Iraqi troops had entered the place and set fire to it, killing 44 of its members. However, Iraqi officials denied any involvement in the unrest.
Ali Al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki confirmed that some MKO members had been killed, but said the deaths were the result of infighting among the camp residents.
The MKO — listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community — fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where it enjoyed the support of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up its camp near the Iranian border.
In December 2011, the United Nations and Baghdad agreed to relocate some 3,000 MKO members from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, to Camp Liberty — a former US military base near Baghdad International Airport.
The group is notorious for carrying out numerous acts of terror against Iranian civilians and officials, involvement in the bloody repression of the 1991 Shia Muslims in southern Iraq, and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds in the country’s north under Saddam.
Tehran has repeatedly called on the Iraqi government to expel the terrorist group, but the US has been blocking the expulsion by pressuring the Iraqi government.
MKA/HGH
Republished from: Press TV