Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) launched a barrage of rockets targeting the Iranian opposition group, The People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran (PMOI), at Camp Liberty in Iraq. The People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran (PMOI) members are waiting at the camp to be resettled outside the country; this same camp was targeted in a rocket attack last year that killed at least 26 people.
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“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.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the PMOI’s parent organization, said in a statement “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,” which blamed Iran-affiliated militias for carrying out the attack.
Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base, has since 2012 housed members of the PMOI, a group that originally opposed the shah but later fought alongside Saddam Hussein’s forces against Iran’s clerical rulers after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The PMOI was also accused by the US State Department of taking part in the brutal suppression of a 1991 Shiite uprising against Saddam, making it widely reviled by members of the country’s Shiite majority, which came to power after 2003. It has denied the accusations.
The exiles have been repeatedly targeted in the years after being disarmed following Saddam’s overthrow, with dozens of its members killed in attacks it generally blamed on Iranian and Iraqi authorities. At least 26 people were killed and many more wounded in a rocket attack on Camp Liberty last October, according to the United Nations.
The Iranian hardliner leadership is quick to silence those Iranians who are vocal against the regime and will do so even if those Iranians are in another country. This is just another addition to the long list of human rights violations that Iran has, which is growing exponentially. Should the Iraqi government intervene on behalf of the PMOI and tell Iran to cease its attacks on Camp Liberty? Sound off in the comments below.
