Iraq orders MKO to evacuate Camp Ashraf

The Iraqi government has ordered the remaining members of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) to immediately evacuate Camp Ashraf following the recent attack against the group.

"The state has the right to order them to leave," Ali Mussawi, spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said on Saturday.

Over 70 terrorists, including top MKO commanders, were killed in an attack on Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s eastern Diyala Province.

According to reports, the 42 MKO members who are still residing in Camp Ashraf should be transferred to Camp Liberty to await relocation to other countries.

The Iraqi government has repeatedly expressed its desire to expel all the terrorists from the country, but it came under intense pressure by the US and the United Nations to continue keeping them until a third country accepts to host them.

The MKO -- listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community -- fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where it enjoyed the support of Iraq's then-dictator Saddam Hussein and set up a terror camp near the Iranian border.

The group is notorious for carrying out numerous acts of terror against Iranian civilians and officials, involvement in the 1991 bloody repression of Shia Muslims in southern Iraq, and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds in the country's north under Saddam.

In December 2011, the United Nations and Baghdad agreed to relocate some 3,000 MKO members from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, to Camp Liberty -- a former US military base near Baghdad International Airport.