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BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Mujahedeen Khalq opposition group is claiming responsibility for explosions near the Iran president's offices, Parliament and other government buildings…
"The Mujahedeen units in Tehran carried out a mortar attack on the offices of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Iranian regime, and (Hashemi) Rafsanjani, the strong man who is the ex-president," Feridoun Suleimani, a spokesman for the Mujahedeen, told CNN on Sunday.
The mortar rounds fell on Saturday in a central Tehran neighborhood that houses key government buildings…
Suleimani said the attacks "are a sign of the instability of the (Iranian) regime and the strength of the resistance."…
"No civilians have been wounded. No civilian has been killed in these attacks. All the wounded and the killed were members of the revolutionary guard who were in fact bodyguards of Khamenei," Suleimani said…
Suleimani said the mortar blasts were aimed at government officials and were carried out with help from Mujahedeen agents operating in secure areas.
"All of the mortars fell on the offices of Khamenei and Rafsanjani who were the targets of this attack," he said.
Suleimani, speaking in Baghdad, in neighboring Iraq, said there have been other attacks in Iran.
"There were attacks in two major provinces in western Iran," Suleimani said. He said some 50 military units of the Mujahedeen took part in attacks on "targets involving three divisions, crack divisions, of the Iranian armed forces."
He said the attacks were on divisions that have been heavily involved in "arrests and torture of people in the areas where they've been based."
"Basically, we know that dozens of officers and other personnel of the military structure of the regime have been killed or wounded in these attacks," he said….
He said the strikes have nothing to do with the February
18 parliamentary elections in Iran, which he called a sham.
Iranian Opposition Claims Series of Attacks in South and West Iran, Agence France Presse, February 6
NICOSIA - Iran's leading armed opposition group, the People's Mujahedin, announced Sunday it had carried out a series of 12 attacks on Iranian forces on exercise in the Kermanshah and Ilam provinces.
In a statement faxed to AFP in Nicosia, the Mujahedin said Sunday's offensive, condemned "Operation Great Bahman (February)" lasted several hours. It said its fighters used 120 mm and 82 mm mortars, as well as 107 mm missiles, "pounding a large number of the clerical regime's military centers despite their being in the full state of alert."
The Mujahedin used heavy and light mortars against Iranian forces stationed in the Qasr-e Shirin region, hitting a battalion headquarters of the 81st armored division with missiles which set fire to the positions, the statement said.
The attacks in this region also included clashes with Iranian rapid reaction forces in south Qasr-e Shirin, the statement said.
The group said it had attacked the headquarters of an armored division battalion in Sumar in Kermanshah province as well as military forces stationed in the Band-e Pir-Ali heights north of Sumar.
The Mujahedin also claimed "scores of enemy forces were killed or injured" after it ambushed intelligence agents and military patrols on the Sumar-Natfshahr road.
In Ilam province, the group said it attacked a special forces battalion west of Dehloran with light mortars and set ambushes on the Shilat-Dehloran road.
The Mujahedin said it had carried out its attacks despite the high level of alert in the region, as Iranian forces carried out ground and air exercises in the west and south of the country.
On Tuesday, the Iranian army completed the deployment of elite forces on the frontier with Iraq in preparation for the biggest military maneuvers there since the end of their nine-year war.
The People's Mujahedeen, which claims to have 50,000 fighters, has announced an increasing number of attacks on forces of the Islamic regime, some of which have been partially confirmed by Tehran.