Terrorism & Insurgency

Will Hartley – IHS Jane’s Terrorism & Insurgency Monitor
06 November 2015

A rocket attack by a Shia militia near the Iraqi capital Baghdad on 29 October targeted members of an Iranian militant group
Twenty-three members of Iranian anti-government militant group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which has been based in Iraq since the 1980s, were reportedly killed on 29 October when at least 15 rockets were fired into Camp Hurriya (or Camp Liberty, the former United States military base) outside Iraq’s Baghdad International Airport. A further 30 members of the group were reported wounded in the barrage at the camp, where around 2,200 MEK cadres and their dependents are currently cantoned.

 The aftermath of the rocket attack at Camp Hurriya near the Iraqi capital Baghdad on 29 October 2015

Since demobilizing in 2003 following the US-led invasion of Iraq, MEK has been the subject of periodic such attacks, particularly since being relocated to Camp Hurriya in 2012, and the latest attack has prompted renewed criticism of the slow progress being made by the US-backed United Nations resettlement programme, which has left the group’s fighters and their families in limbo for more than a decade.
This criticism has recently been sharpened by concerns regarding the increasingly assertive role being played in Iraq by Iranian-backed Shia militias.