World

Baghdad Blast Hits Iran Exiles

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 9, 1999 / 6:19 AM EDT / CBS

Exiles blamed Iran for a bomb attack in Baghdad against an anti-
Tehran exiled guerilla group on Wednesday that reportedly killed seven people, including one Iraqi.

Raising the earlier death toll from four to seven, officials of the Mujahideen Khalq organization of armed exiles said four of its members died immediately and two more in the hospital. An Iraqi civilian was also killed on a passing bus hit by the blast.

More than 20 people were thought to have been injured in the blast, which a spokesman for the group earlier blamed on the "mullah regime in Tehran."

The spokesman said the force of the explosion had created a large crater. The injured Mujahideen members were rushed to a nearby Baghdad hospital.

Â"The Mujahideen reserves the right to self-defense and to respond to this terrorist attack,Â" he said.

It was the second attack this week against the Mujahideen Khalq, which opposes the Tehran government. On Sunday, two bomb blasts apparently intended to damage the Mujahideen headquarters in Baghdad caused no casualties.

The Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the assassination in April of Iran's armed forces deputy joint chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Ali Sayyad Shirazi, and Tehran threatened to avenge the killing.

Another Mujahideen official, Ibrahim Zakeri, told reporters taken to the scene that the bomb also devastated an Iraqi bus carrying civilians, killing one and injuring several others.

The exile group uses Iraq as a springboard for attacks into Iran and has several bases equipped with tanks, heavy guns and helicopter gunships close to the Iranian border.

Mujahideen bases have been the target of air and rocket attacks by Iran, but Suleimaini said Wednesday's blast was the worst since 1993, when the group moved to Iraq.

Iran and Iraq fought a costly eight-year war during the 1980Â's that began shortly after IranÂ's Islamic revolution.