Mortar attack kills several in Iranian dissident camp in Iraq

Several people were killed in a mortar attack at an Iranian dissident camp in Iraq early Sunday morning, according to security and Iraqi government sources.

Accounts differ about how many people died, and it was not immediately clear who fired the mortars. The Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran said members of its Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) affiliate died early Sunday in a raid early that it blamed on Iraqi security forces. Spokesman Shahin Gobadi says as many as 34 were killed.

The MEK told Reuters news agency in an emailed statement that Iraqi security forces machine-gunned some members of its camp, who had their hands tied behind their backs.

Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesperson for Iraq’s prime minister, told The Associated Press that a preliminary investigation suggests some camp residents died as a result of infighting. He denied that Iraqi forces were involved.

Iraq’s government considers the MEK’s presence in Iraq illegal and wants its followers to leave. It has previously launched deadly raids on the camp northeast of Baghdad.

The MEK calls for the overthrow of Iran’s clerical leaders and fought alongside the forces of former Iraqi Sunni Muslim dictator Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. The group was forced into exile in 1981 after the Iranian revolution, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The group moved its operations to eastern Iraq in 1986, according to CFR, and has been seeking to recast itself as an Iranian opposition force -- but is no longer welcome in Iraq under the Shi’ite Muslim-led government that came to power after U.S.-led forces invaded and toppled Hussein in 2003.

Al Jazeera and wire services