AFP: Iran’s main armed opposition group denied Sunday that it had any hand in a wave of deadly bombings that rocked Tehran and the southwestern city of Ahvaz just days before a presidential election. The Iraq-based People’s Mujahedeen “strongly condemned” what it described as “efforts by the Iranian regime and its agents to blame” it for the blasts, in a statement received by AFP in Nicosia. AFP
NICOSIA – Iran’s main armed opposition group denied Sunday that it had any hand in a wave of deadly bombings that rocked Tehran and the southwestern city of Ahvaz just days before a presidential election.
The Iraq-based People’s Mujahedeen “strongly condemned” what it described as “efforts by the Iranian regime and its agents to blame” it for the blasts, in a statement received by AFP in Nicosia.
“These claims are sheer lies,” a spokesman said.
“The mullahs’ objective in churning out these lies is to create mischief between the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran and the Iraqi government.
“These efforts reflect the desperate state of the mullahs’ regime in the face of the unprecedented public response to the iranian resistance’s calls for a nationwide boycott of the sham presidential election on June 17.”
At least eight people were killed and 75 wounded in a quartet of blasts in Ahvaz Sunday morning.
Two more were killed and at least two wounded in a further blast in the capital, which was followed by a series of smaller explosions.
Iran blamed “terrorists” and Arab separatists sheltered by US troops in neighbouring Iraq.
To Tehran’s anger, former fighters of the People’s Mujahedeen remain cantoned in a camp northeast of Baghdad under US supervision having been disarmed under an agreement reached following the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
