Four hurt as Iraqi protestors attack Iraqi embassy
in Tehran
TEHRAN, Feb 23 (AFP) - Iraqi security guards fired shots in the air
and four people were injured as hundreds of Iraqi opponents of President
Saddam Hussein attacked the Iraqi embassy here Tuesday, Iraqi opposition
sources said.
Some 1,000 protestors threw stones at the mission and tried to scale
the surrounding walls and get inside, members of the Tehran-based Iraqi
opposition group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI),
said.
Iraqi security guards fired about 15 shots into the air to try to force
the demonstrators back, they said.
Four people were slightly hurt when Iranian police moved in to disperse
the crowd, the SCIRI members said in accounts of the incident which were
confirmed to AFP by witnesses.
A sentry hut outside the embassy was destroyed by the protestors and
one person who managed to get inside the diplomatic complex was thrown
out.
Earlier Tuesday, several hundred Iraqis living in Iran demonstrated
outside the UN building here against last week's assassination of a top
Shiite Moslem cleric in Iraq and Baghdad's crackdown on Shiite protests.
The demonstrators called on the international community to act against
"the repression and massacres of innocent people in Iraq."
The protestors, who included women and children, also chanted slogans
"against the Iraqi regime and the hegemonistic policy of the United
States," the official IRNA news agency reported.
Top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Sadek al-Sadr and two of his sons
were assassinated in Iraq on Friday, and the Iraqi opposition says fierce
clashes subsequently broke out in several towns between protestors and
security forces.
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