MKO’s Iraq casualties top 70 amid reports of attack by terror victims
Earlier reports indicate that a shootout had already broken out between Iraqi security forces and MKO members, leaving some 50 terrorists and four Iraqi officers dead.
According to the latest reports, the Sunday incident at the notorious terror Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s eastern Diyala Province was as a result of an attack by a group of Iraqi people and relatives of those martyred at the hands of the terrorists, who joined forces with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in a 1991 to crush an uprising by Iraqi Shias.
The Iraqis who stormed the terror camp further demanded the immediate ouster of all MKO terrorists from their country.
Although most MKO terrorists were forcibly transferred from Camp Ashraf to the former US-held Camp Liberty near Baghdad months ago, around 100 members had remained in the camp.
This is while the Iraqi government has repeatedly expressed its desire to expel all the terrorists from the country, but it came under intense pressure by the US and the United Nations to remain their host until a third country offers to accept them.
According to the new reports, among the terrorists killed during the incident are Zohreh Ghasemi, the MKO kingpin in Iraq, and Guiti Giveh-chian, who was in charge of the terror group’s intelligence and operations units.
Seven other high-profile members were also killed.
Additionally, a number of the terrorists were reportedly injured during the incident.
Earlier reports indicate that a shootout had already broken out between Iraqi security forces and MKO members, leaving some 50 terrorists and four Iraqi officers dead.
Iraqi officials and the terrorist MKO members released conflicting reports about the clashes and explosions that took place at the camp on Sunday.
The MKO claimed that Iraqi security forces raided the camp early in the day and set fire to their property inside.
The Iraqi government, however, denied any involvement in the incident.
Iraqi officials further stated that MKO terrorists attacked an army brigade responsible for the camp after the incident, killing four Iraqi soldiers and injuring four others.
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 then-dictator Saddam Hussein and set up a terror camp near the Iranian border.
Saddam was executed in 2006, following a US-led military occupation and rule over the country that brought major destruction across the nation and eventually an elected government, based on a constitution that is widely believed influenced by the American occupiers.
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 1991 bloody repression of 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.