By Steve Hynd
On the personal orders of prime minister Maliki, Iraqi soldiers and police have stormed the Camp Ashraf base of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MeK) terror group just 50 miles North of Baghdad using pepper gas and water cannon. The attack was apparently executed without US knowledge or approval. General Odierno told reporters "We didn't know they we're going do this."
"After the failure of negotiations with the Mujahedeen to enter peacefully, the Iraqi army entered Camp Ashraf with force and it now controls all of the interior and all entrances to the camp," an Iraqi military source said.
There are conflicting reports of casualties, even from the same news agency. AFP originally reporting 15 camp members injured, but having since revised that to over 150 camp members injured and two shot, along with 50 injured members of the security forces.
The Iraqi government has made it clear that the MeK cannot remain in Iraq. It is a Marxist/Islamist cult which believes its leader is the 12th Imam, helped Saddam oppress his own people and believes its own "messiah" leader should rule Iran. Reports of its brainwashing its members are well documented and its attacks have in the past killed US citizens as well as Iranians. However, it reportedly renounced violence after being captured, disarmed and confined to Camp Ashraf by the US military in 2003.
There are going to be howls of protest from American neoconservatives, who have long cherished the MeK as being their kind of terrorists: a conduit for often wildly exaggerated intelligence from inside Iran's military and its nuclear program. Not one of the group's over 50 allegations about 50,000 secret working centrifuges, secret tunnel sytems built by the Russians, secret nuclear reactors in Tehran's suburbs or other lurid James Bond fantasies since 2003 has proven true. The MeK are the likely source of the so-called Laptop of Death which current hawkish hopes of proving Iran wants a nuke now rest. There were rumors, too that the MeK had been used as a proxy force against Iran by the Bush administration.
The terror group has appealed for continuing US protection.
"The Iranian Resistance holds the US forces responsible for protection of Ashraf residents and calls on the UN secretary general and all human rights organisations to intervene immediately to stop attack by Iraqi forces."
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