AFP/Baghdad

A rocket barrage killed at least 26 Iranian exiles at a camp near Baghdad, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said yesterday after the deadliest attack against the opposition group in years.
The United States and United Nations condemned the attack on the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), which demanded that its members be protected.
The attack may help to accelerate the long-running process of relocating PMOI members outside Iraq, which has been going on for years.
Ban “condemns the attack... on Camp Hurriya (Liberty), near the Baghdad International Airport, which left at least 26 residents dead and many more wounded”, a UN statement said.
He called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice and for the relocation process to be accelerated, terming it “the only safe and durable solution for the residents”.
According to Iraqi security sources, at least 15 rockets fired from an area west of Baghdad called Bakriya struck in and around Camp Liberty on Thursday evening, while the PMOI put the number of rockets at more than 80.
Powerful Shia militia groups are present in areas west of Baghdad, and the Islamic State militant group lacks the interest to attack the PMOI.
The PMOI released photos said to show bodies of the victims killed in the rocket attack, one of which showed 20 people lying in two rows on stretchers on the ground.
Camp Liberty, a former US military base, has since 2012 housed members of the PMOI, a group that originally opposed the shah but later fought alongside Saddam Hussain’s forces against Iran’s clerical rulers after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that “the United States strongly condemns (the) brutal, senseless terrorist attack on Camp Hurriya that killed and injured camp residents”.
The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said: “This is a most deplorable act, and I am greatly concerned at the harm that has been inflicted on those living at Camp Liberty.