EU Condemns Attack on Iran Exile Camp in Iraq

The European Union called on the Iraqi government Saturday to investigate last week's rocket attack on a camp holding exiled Iranian dissidents which left several people dead and many injured.

A statement from EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton's said she condemned "in the strongest terms" the December 26 attack at Camp Hurriya near Baghdad airport, housing dissidents awaiting to be transferred elsewhere.

"The circumstances in which this brutal incident took place must be clarified and those found to be responsible must be held fully accountable," the statement said.

Ashton called for security to be stepped up around the camp to protect residents and urged "the Iraqi government to find the perpetrators and hold them accountable for the attack."

The exiled Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has said three people were killed and dozens hurt.

The United States too has condemned the attack, the third such incident this year, "in the strongest terms.”

The former U.S. military base houses some 3,000 members of Iran's opposition People's Mujahedeen, founded in the 1960s to oppose the shah of Iran and later the country's clerical rulers.

The group set up camp in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's war with Iran in the 1980s, but was disarmed after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 toppled Hussein, and today's Shia-majority and Iran-friendly government in Baghdad is eager to see it move elsewhere.