Iran Denies Involvement in Baghdad ExplosionsIranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi on Monday denied the Iraqi claim that Tehran was behind the recent explosions in Baghdad, Tehran Radio reported.Terming the claims by some Iraqi officials and newspapers as "baseless," Asefi said the explosions in Baghdad were the internal issues of Iraq and had no links with Iran. A child was killed and several other people were injured on Saturday in a missile attack in Baghdad. Iraqi officials and newspapers blamed "Iranian agents" for the attack. An Iraqi opposition group backed by Iran claimed responsibility for the attack and vowed to continue attacks on the Baghdad regime until its collapse. Hours after the attack on Baghdad, the Iraq-based Iranian military opposition Mujaheddin Khalq Organization (MKO) launched a mortar attack on Kermanshah, the capital of Iran's western border province Kermanshah. The Iranian official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted witnesses as saying that several people were injured in the explosions in the central city. The MKO claimed that its members had launched a mortar attack against the headquarters of an Iranian anti-riot police in Kermanshah. Since the beginning of this year, the MKO has launched three mortar attacks on residential units in the capital city of Tehran, close to Iranian government building and military headquarters. The group, a famous political-military one which fought against the former Iranian shah regime, was outlawed in 1981 and fled into Iraq following sharp differences with the Iranian government. Labeled by Iran as a "terrorist group," the MKO has launched series of cross-border attacks inside Iran in recent years, including attempts to assassinate senior Iranian officials. In retaliation, Iranian armed forces also launched several air raids on the MKO bases in Iraq. Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year-long bloody war that ended in 1988 and relations between the two Muslim neighbors remain strained. The two countries have always been trading accusations against each other for harboring opposition groups. |
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