BREAKING NEWS

UN counts 52 corpses after violence at Iranian dissident camp in Iraq

By REUTERS

SEPTEMBER 3, 2013 19:46

BAGHDAD - A UN team said on Tuesday it had counted 52 bodies in a makeshift morgue at an Iranian dissident camp, most with gunshot wounds and some with their hands tied, two days after violence that it decried as an "atrocious crime".

The dissident Mujahadin-e-Khalq (MEK) group blamed the Iraqi army for Sunday's bloodshed, but an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose government is close to Iran, dismissed the accusation as baseless.

Following a visit to Camp Ashraf on Monday, the UN team said most of the corpses had gunshot wounds to the head and upper body. It said several buildings in the camp were also damaged, including one which was burnt out.

"I call on the Iraqi government to ensure that a thorough, impartial and transparent investigation into this atrocious crime is conducted without delay and that the results of the investigation are made public," Gyorgy Busztin, acting UN envoy to Iraq, said in a statement.

A spokesman for the Iraqi government could not be immediately reached for comment. But the adviser to Maliki, Ali al-Moussawi, said on Sunday the prime minister had ordered an investigation into what had happened.

Before the violence there were about 100 MEK Iranian exiles at Camp Ashraf, which the Iraqi government wants closed down.

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