BAGHDAD: Iraq has ordered Iranian exiles to move from a camp where 52 of their members were killed a week ago “without delay”, a government official and UN said.
Baghdad opened a probe into the events surrounding the deaths of the members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran, which occurred on Sunday at Camp Ashraf in Diyala province, but accounts of the unrest still differ markedly.
The UN and Western governments have condemned the bloodshed, but have been careful not to assign blame. “The state has the right to order them to leave,” Ali Mussawi, spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, said. “There is an order for them to leave.”
The UN’s mission to Baghdad said in a statement that it believed the Iraqi government “will move to enforce this order without delay”. That would require the 42 remaining residents of Camp Ashraf to be moved to Camp Liberty, a former US military base on the outskirts of Baghdad, while PMOI members await relocation outside of Iraq.
Iraqi officials and the PMOI have offered conflicting narratives of how the 52 died. The authorities blame infighting within the PMOI for the deaths, and insist no soldiers entered Ashraf. Those accounts are sharply contested by the PMOI, which charges that Iraqi forces entered the camp, killed 52 of its members and set fire to the group’s property and goods.
AFP
