Category Archives: #StopIran

Hillary’s Top Security Clearance Status in Question

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While the FBI is performing a robust investigation on Hillary’s servers, emails and communications that include her inner circle of people, no one is publically asking about her present security clearance status. Consider the following facts and then question whether she should even has any clearance.

  1. There were emails between Hillary Clinton, the White House and Barack Obama himself. The White House has said they were aware of Hillary’s use of a private email but not her use of a covert communications server. Consequently, the White House is fully protecting all communications between Hillary and the White House until after Mr. Obama leaves office. There are legal challenges to this underway.
  2. Hillary was derelict and forgetful when it came to securing classified material at her office at Foggy Bottom. Classified material must be protected at all times and comply with protocol and procedures.
  3. Hillary and Susan Rice were warned NOT to use the excuse of the video, 2 days before Susan Rice trotted out to the 5 Sunday morning talk shows as there was no evidence the video played any role in the Benghazi attack.
  4. Per the House Committee on Benghazi and the CIA: “CIA Head: ‘Analysts Never Said the Video was a Factor in the Benghazi Attacks’.

There is more, but at this point, continue with the question, if Hillary has top security clearance, the objective must be to have it terminated. If Hillary does not have top security clearance at this point as she has been gone from the State Department since 2013, she should be forced to apply again if she becomes the Democratic nominee for President. Then given the existing facts and those that come from the FBI investigation, she should not be granted this clearance status, thus preventing her completely from holding the office of President in totality.

There was also a trail of communications that prove complete disdain of Israel by not only the White House but by Hillary’s State Department internal officials and those of her outer and more clandestine circle of advisors beginning in 2009.

Click here for that particular email.

For perspective and for some context as to the willful and derelict attitude and culture was at Hillary’s State Department, a handful of emails most recently released tell the story.

From Politico: (in part)

A White House official declined to say whether any of the Obama-Clinton emails related to Libya. If so, the White House’s position could cause an executive privilege clash with Congress, since the House Benghazi Committee subpoenaed all Clinton emails related to Benghazi in March of this year.

The new release of Clinton emails — the largest batch of messages made public since State began posting the messages online to comply with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit — revealed more about Clinton’s knowledge of embassy security issues and provided a window into lighter moments like Clinton being instructed in the use of emojis.

Friday’s document release is the sixth of its kind and with it, more than half of the messages Clinton turned over to the agency from her private email account and server have now been made public. In the new batch, State deemed 268 emails classified at the lowest classification tier, according to spokesman John Kirby, who said that none of these emails “were marked classified at the time they were sent or received.” There are now between 600 and 700 emails newly marked as classified since the releases began in May.

Clinton, who has been battling the controversy regarding her exclusive use of a private email account and homebrew server during her tenure at Foggy Bottom, has contended that no emails on her account were marked as classified at the time she received them.

The emails released on Friday were sent and received largely during 2011 and 2012, with additional messages from 2009 and 2010 that were not part of previous batches.

Many of the early messages reflect difficulty coordinating between Clinton’s team and the White House. In April 2009, then-National Security Council communications adviser Denis McDonough apologized after senior State officials were left out of the loop on White House announcements about Armenia and Sri Lanka. Clinton told aides she had “forcefully” complained and asked a colleague to show “a little sternness” in confronting the White House about the snubs.

In one message in May 2011, Clinton vented to a longtime friend that not even “the allure of Mother Moon in all her glory” could impress Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Longtime Clinton friend Sid Blumenthal, who frequently gave advice that Clinton said was unsolicited, also offered up in May his analysis of the upcoming November 2010 election, making reference to Rand Paul, then a candidate for Kentucky Senate.

“In the short-term, post-May 18 primaries, the splits within the GOP need to be highlighted; the takeover by extremist forces emphasized; the rejection of traditional Republicans within their own party stressed; and the economic consequences of the extremists—not least now, the gift of Rand Paul, the Republicans’ new spokesman on the scene—who would shut down Social Seucrity [sic], Medicare, student scholarships, and the interstate highway system—constantly targeted as a threat to economic recovery. Run, Rand, run!” he wrote in a memo marked “CONFIDENTIAL.”

In another email chain, Clinton expressed hesitance about the protocol of helping out a famous friend. She received at least three emails from chief of staff Cheryl Mills pertaining to a request from a former ambassador asking the secretary of state to lobby for composer Marvin Hamlisch to receive Kennedy Center honors. Clinton, noted Fay Hartog Levin, was a friend and fan of the musician.

After the ambassador followed up again to see about a letter or a call, Mills asked Clinton her thoughts.

“Sure. I’ll do, but didn’t know that was appropriate. Can you ask Ann Stock. I’d like to support him in best way possible,” she wrote.

Hamlisch died in August 2012, four months after the exchange.

Clinton also got a crash course in emojis. “Here’s my question: on this new berry can I get smiley faces?” Clinton asked senior adviser Philippe Reines.

“For email, no, I don’t think so – you need to type them out manually like 🙂 for happy, or :-I I if you want to express anger at my tardiness,” Reines wrote, after his initial email apologizing for keeping her waiting.

Reines pointed out that for texting, “the chart might be there in the lower right, next to where you type the message.”

“If it’s not, I THINK that if you type 🙂 it MIGHT automatically convert it into a symbol. Try it,” he told the secretary of state.

Another email shows Clinton getting briefed on embassy security issues, despite her contention at last week’s House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing that she did not directly deal with security matters.

When Republicans tried to buttonhole Clinton because State declined numerous requests for additional security at the Benghazi compound that was later over-run, Clinton largely waved them off. Those requests for more protection, she argued several times that day, went to people who deal with security — not her, personally.

One email from April 23, 2009, however, shows top State aide Huma Abedin updating Clinton on a few embassy security issues. In a series of bullet points sent to “H2” at 8:34 a.m., Abedin listed steps State was taking to secure Afghanistan and Pakistan embassies, including “increasing the number of hooches, and doubling up staff in lodging.”
“[W]e need to improve the security perimeter — acquiring property adjacent to our current facilities in Kabul, which is now difficult to secure,” one bullet reads. “Long-term, we need embassies in these countries adequate to serve the mission. It’s not so long ago our Embassy in Islamabad was torched; we need a facility which is structurally sound. In Kabul, we need facilities adequate to size the mission needed.”

It was not clear, though, if Clinton responded to the email or followed up in any other way.

Another newly released Libya email forwarded to Clinton and her top policy staffer Jake Sullivan, dated about a year before the Benghazi attack, warned of Islamist threats in Libya that could turn eventually pose a serious danger. State Department policy planning official Andrew Miller sent Sullivan a memo warning that once Qaddafi was ousted, Islamist groups that had focused their energy on canning the brutal dictator could turn their attention elsewhere and become violent.

“Once operations against Qadhafi and the regime are wrapped up, this force for unity is likely to dissipate,” Miller wrote. Sullivan forwarded the memo to Clinton, who asked her staff to “pls print.” “It is at this point that militias, including the Islamists, will probably abandon caution and pursue a more aggressive campaign for power, perhaps including violence.”

Clinton emerged from last Thursday’s high-stakes, marathon 11-hour Benghazi committee hearing with her campaign and messaging intact. However, Clinton is not out of the woods as far as potential new discoveries in the email controversy that has dogged her campaign. Beyond the other thousands of emails that the State Department has yet to publicly release, there are myriad Freedom of Information Act lawsuits seeking the release of emails from not only Clinton but also her top aides, and at least two other Senate committees are probing Clinton’s email setup.

Additionally, the FBI is probing Clinton’s email arrangement to determine whether sensitive materials were mishandled, and investigators have reportedly successfully recovered some of the messages Clinton’s aides deleted from her server because they deemed them private.

In an interview in March, Obama said he was not aware of Clinton’s email arrangement until news reports about it emerged earlier this year. However, White House spokesman Josh Earnest acknowledged a short time later that Obama had exchanged emails with Clinton on her account, but was not aware that she had no official account and exclusively used her private one during her time as America’s top diplomat.

When producing records to the House Benghazi Committee, the State Department has repeatedly acknowledged that it was holding back a “small” number of documents that implicate “important executive branch confidentiality interests.” However, a New York Times report Friday was the first to make clear the Obama Administration is taking such a tack with respect to the Obama-Clinton messages.

While the White House seems eager to avoid asserting executive privilege over the Obama-Clinton messages, it may have little choice but to do so if it wants to protect them from disclosure. All of Clinton’s emails have been requested in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Vice News. Lawyers said State will eventually have to account for all of those messages and identify a basis for any deletions or omissions. In that context, the Justice Department is likely to assert a version of executive privilege called the “presidential communications privilege.”

The White House could try to argue that the Clinton-Obama messages are not subject to FOIA at all, but that would be an aggressive stance that lawyers who fight for government transparency are sure to resist.

“I would take the view that the copy that is in Obama’s email account at the White House is a presidential record and the copy that went to Hillary Clinton and was maintained on her email server is a State Department record subject to the Federal Records Act and FOIA,” said Scott Nelson of Public Citizen Litigation Group.

Ultimately, the courts are unlikely to force the release of the contents of the Clinton-Obama exchanges through FOIA, although details about who was on the email chains and when they were exchanged will probably emerge in the coming months. Nelson noted that the substance of the messages will probably come out through Obama’s presidential library before they would be accessible under FOIA. Presidential records detailing advice to a president are usually subject to release 12 years after he leaves office.

“You might get access to the presidential records one sooner than the FOIA one,” Nelson said.

Congress could also press for the emails, but if they don’t relate to Libya or Benghazi, it’s unclear which committee would do so. A Hill subpoena could force Obama to formally assert executive privilege over the records, as it did in a House committee’s showdown with Attorney General Eric Holder over records relating to the government’s response to the Operation Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let ’em Fight, Fight to Win, 50 SpecOps to Syria

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The White House says there is no military solution to Syria and this deployment is not a game changer, rather the White House was a diplomatic solution, allegedly a new election for Syria. Assad’s job is safe for at least 6 months, perhaps longer.

The dangers are significant when it Syria, there are an alleged 5000 Iranian forces, Hezbollah, Cuba, Russia, pro-Assad forces and al Qaeda factions. If the rules of engagement and supportive military assets are allowed, this is a moment the United States can prevail. Yet under Mr. Obama in collusion with Iran and Russia the expectations for winning and success are slim.

Putin’s military minister is already verbally outflanking the White House:

MOSCOW (AP) — A senior Russian government official says some in the U.S. may have a delusion of winning a war with Russia with new conventional weapons without resorting to nuclear arms.

Dmitry Rogozin, a deputy prime minister in charge of military industries, said in remarks carried Friday by Russian news agencies that “for the first time ever, the American strategists have developed an illusion … that they may defeat a nuclear power in a non-nuclear war.” He added that “it’s nonsense, and it will never happen.”

Rogozin, who spoke after the Security Council’s meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin, was commenting on prospective U.S. weapons under the so-called Prompt Global Strike program, which would be capable of striking targets anywhere in the world in as little as an hour with deadly precision.

U.S. to Send Special Forces to Syria

Syrian government forces walk in the eastern outskirts of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

By Adam Entous, Gordon Lubold and Carol E. Lee

 

WASHINGTON—The White House has approved the deployment of small teams of U.S. Special Forces to locations in northeastern Syria, expanding America’s direct role on the ground in support of U.S.-backed Syrian rebel forces as they prepare for a new military campaign against Islamic State militants in their stronghold in Raqqa, officials said.

The new deployment would amount to the first sustained U.S. ground presence in Syria. A senior Obama administration official said the U.S. role in Syria would, nonetheless, remain narrow. “We don’t have any intention to pursue long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like those we’ve seen in the past in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the official said.

Eleven million people displaced, four million refugees, and a quarter of a million dead—all in the last four years. What’s happened to Syria’s people? WSJ’s Niki Blasina takes a look at the world’s largest humanitarian crisis since World War II.

Up to 50 U.S. commandos will be involved in the new mission under President Barack Obama’s authorization, officials said, marking the start of a sharp escalation in the level of U.S. involvement in the fight against Islamic State.

The new campaign is expected to kick off with an operation in northern Syria as early as next week. Initially, two small teams will evaluate the security situation on the ground and link up with local Syrian forces there, officials said.

The American commandos will operate under what the Pentagon calls an “advise-and-assist” mission. But military officials said they couldn’t rule out the possibility that the forces would be pulled into occasional firefights with Islamic State given their proximity to the confrontation line. The officials cited as an example last week’s raid in Iraq in which a U.S. commando was killed.

Since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Mr. Obama has sought to keep U.S. ground forces out of the country, although the Pentagon has conducted a limited number of raids there using special-operations forces since mid-2014.

The change in the U.S. approach comes as the White House struggles to demonstrate progress in the fight against Islamic State and begins talks with Russia and Iran over the future of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Moscow and Tehran, allies of Mr. Assad, have stepped up their support for the regime in recent weeks.

Officials said the special-operations forces will help coordinate local Syrian forces fighting Islamic State, as well as help ensure they receive U.S. air support during ground operations.

To support local forces with their ground campaign, Mr. Obama has authorized the deployment of A-10 ground-attack planes as well as F-15 fighters to the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, a senior administration official said.

The decision, made in a meeting between Mr. Obama and his top advisors Thursday, followed weeks of debate over ways to increase pressure on Islamic State.

In addition to authorizing the special-forces deployment, Mr. Obama also has authorized U.S. officials to discuss with the Iraqi government the establishment of a special-operations task force there. Officials said Mr. Obama has also agreed to furnish targeting information to Jordan to help its attack aircraft pinpoint Islamic State positions, officials said.

The White House, however, has yet to approve other proposals that would expand the U.S. role in the conflict, including a military proposal to deploy a small squadron of Apache attack helicopters to Iraq.

For months, members of the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force have been in contact with Syrian Kurdish and Sunni Arab commanders who have been jointly fighting Islamic State militants in a swath of territory in northeastern Syria east of the Euphrates River.

In early October, the Pentagon abandoned plans to build an army from the ground up to fight Islamic State in favor of providing ammunition and other equipment directly to the Syrian Arab commanders with whom the U.S. commandos have been in contact.

The Pentagon recently used aircraft to drop ammunition and other supplies to those commanders, part of what the Pentagon calls the Syrian Arab Coalition, which fights alongside Syrian Kurdish groups.

The growing partnership between U.S. Special Forces and Kurdish groups in northeastern Syria has angered North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally Turkey, which has accused the Pentagon of sending arms to the Kurds rather than the Syrian Arab Coalition. Ankara sees Kurdish territorial gains in Syria as a threat to the Turkish state. Pentagon officials say they delivered the arms to the Syrian Arab Coalition as intended.

U.S. officials said the deployment of the American commandos will help in laying the ground for a U.S.-backed campaign to encircle Raqqa, the Islamic State stronghold, and cut the city off from Mosul, the group’s stronghold in neighboring Iraq. U.S. officials said both the Syrian Arab Coalition and the Kurds will take part in that campaign, assisted by U.S. air support.

Officials said the new campaign doesn’t call in the near term for U.S. allies on the ground to try to retake Raqqa from Islamic State. Rather, the aim of the planned campaign will be to “squeeze” Islamic State within Raqqa by closing off the group’s supply lines.

Mr. Obama’s decision to expand the role of U.S. special-operations forces on the ground inside Syria followed a rare joint mission last week by U.S. special forces and Kurdish fighters to free prisoners of Islamic State in Iraq. The commandos intervened unexpectedly when the Kurdish forces they were assisting were pinned down by Islamic State fighters. One of the U.S. commandos was killed in the firefight, the first U.S. combat fatality in Iraq since 2011.

In May, Delta Force commandos carried out a raid in Syria in which they killed an Islamic State finance chief and captured his wife.

The first known U.S. raid in Syria during the civil war took place in July 2014, when Delta Force commandos attempted to rescue several Americans held by Islamic State militants at an oil facility near Raqqa. The U.S. force swarmed the oil facility but the militants had already moved the hostages.

Cold War Part 2, Gathering Conditions

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At the center of the conditions we have Iran, Russia, China and for extra measure, more aggressive terror factions and cells.

We had Afghanistan won until Barack Obama declared a termination to hostilities and combat roles. Now, conditions include:

Islamic State militants who say they are based in Afghanistan have in recent days promoted their alleged successes in the country. And on Wednesday they issued a call for Muslims to “take up arms” against Jews and Christians and “fight them in whatever way we can.”

The message in the Pashto language was the third time in less than a week that IS has highlighted its activities in Afghanistan on its website. In recent days, U.S. and Afghan officials have warned of an increased IS presence in Afghanistan and of its threat to Central Asia.

FNC: Russia has helped Iran deliver weapons into Syria twice a day over the past 10 days, western intelligence sources tell Fox News. Those sources say Russian cargo planes transported the weapons. The planes were spotted earlier this month on the tarmac at the Russian air base in Latakia, Syria’s primary port city. The flights are not registered, and are in breach of two United Nations Security Council resolutions which impose an arms embargo on Iran.

Fox News is told the increased Russian transport of Iranian weapons is being coordinated by Qassem Soulimeini, the head of the Iranian Al-Quds force, as well as President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. An Iranian civilian airline, Mahan Air, is flying military personnel into Syria several times each day from Tehran to Latakia.

Tehran’s support has been crucial to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s survival. Besides significant financial aid to Assad, Iran has acknowledged that its Revolutionary Guard officers are on the ground in Syria in an advisory role. There have been multiple Iranian officers and soldiers killed in fighting in Syria, though Tehran denies the presence of actual combat troops in the country.

In part: The United States has upgraded the security at its two largest overseas nuclear weapons bases, Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and Aviano Air Base in Italy. Incirlik is undergoing a particularly extensive upgrade, a move connected to its vulnerable location close to the Syrian border.

Recent satellite images from Incirlik and Aviano show double-fence security perimeters—a sealed-off area where intruders can be shot—being built around the nuclear weapons storage areas. At Incirlik the garage holding the trucks that service the warheads is also being improved, along with the trucks themselves. Incirlik’s newly upgraded area contains 21 vaults, each holding two to three warheads, and will be equipped with lighting, cameras, and intrusion-detection devices. In addition to soldiers already guarding the enclosure, manned vehicles will also patrol space between the two fences around the clock.

Combined, the Incirlik measures amount to a major security upgrade. “They didn’t use to have the special double-fence security perimeter with sensors and the patrol road around the nuclear weapons vaults,” explained Hans Kristensen, a nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists, who first reported the Incirlik and Aviano activity on his blog. “When the vaults were constructed in the nineties, they were considered so secure that the special security perimeter that had previously been used for nuclear weapons storage areas was no longer considered necessary.” He added that it’s unclear whether the upgrade is a direct result of volatility in the region or related to changed Pentagon security requirements.

More Cold War Part 2 Indicators:

Just as Russia has increased its military activism in the Middle East, the Kremlin is turning down the temperature in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, as the September 1 cease-fire is largely holding and larger caliber weaponry is being pulled back. The October 2 Paris meeting of the leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine, and Russia—the so-called Normandy Format—yielded a modest but positive result in postponing unsanctioned elections in the separatist areas. Yet the ultimate goal of returning Ukraine’s sovereignty over its eastern border still seems distant. Russia’s shadow therefore continues to loom over NATO’s eastern flank.

Against this geopolitical backdrop, 28 NATO defense ministers agreed on a plan to expand the NATO Response Force (NRF) to 40,000 troops, more than double its current size. This implements one of the principal elements of the program launched by NATO leaders at the September 2014 Wales Summit to upgrade NATO’s rapid-response capacity and to begin adapting the alliance to the challenges from Russia in the east. Among the other key elements in NATO’s adaptation are the creation of a high-readiness “spearhead” task force—Secretary General Stoltenberg announced October 8 that lead nations for the spearhead force have been identified through 2022 (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom), demonstrating resolve by NATO members to put resources behind its top-priority initiative. Thus far, the United States has deferred a decision to become a lead nation for the spearhead force, but the Obama administration’s European Reassurance Initiative invested $1 billion in Fiscal Year 2015 in strengthening European defense, enabling U.S. force rotations, security assistance, and pre-positioning of equipment in Europe. Sustaining U.S. investments beyond FY15 will be essential to ensuring European—and transatlantic—security.

Need more? al Qaeda in the Maghreb, deploying more special forces to Iraq against ISIS, additional success and growth of ISIS in Afghanistan, terror plan or Asia discovered, the Taliban is aiding and harboring al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

There is more, but you understand that since America under Barack Obama has retreated, the enemies are exploiting the weakness and lack of strategy by the West, where the United States used to lead.

MI5 and the FBI: Terrorists on Twitter-Social Media

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Twitter is the least cooperative technology company calling terrorists on the internet ‘freedom fighters. This was revealed in testimony this week.

Twitter has come under criticism from some analysts who say the social media company has failed to swiftly remove accounts that recruit potential terrorists and incite violence, raising concerns that the United States has not done enough to combat the Islamic State’s rapid expansion of its propaganda operations online.

Mark Wallace, CEO of the Counter Extremism Project, said on Wednesday that the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) terrorist group has effectively used social media sites such as Twitter to propagandize and radicalize individuals, including Americans. His nonprofit project recently chronicled 66 U.S. citizens who are accused of joining or attempting to join the Islamic State, plotting attacks in the United States, providing financial support to extremist groups, or disseminating radical propaganda.

“These individuals have very different backgrounds and experiences, but the one characteristic they seem to share is active participation on social media,” he said in testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The terror group known as Islamic State or Daesh has deployed and exploited unprescendented use of social media, where the effectiveness is beyond definition. Intelligence agencies in the West are grappling with solutions pushing the protections of free speech and use of the internet.

In part from Newsweek: The head of Britain’s internal counter-intelligence service MI5, has warned that ISIS and other extremist groups “continue to aspire to mass casualty attacks against the U.K.” and that an increasing proportion of their communication online and via encrypted channels is out of reach of Britain’s security services.

“All of this means the threat we are facing today is on a scale and at a tempo that I have not seen before in my career,” Andrew Parker said in his keynote speech made at a lord mayor’s event in London on Wednesday night.
Parker also warned of the “three-dimensional threat” that ISIS pose—at home, overseas and online. “We are seeing plots against the U.K. directed by terrorists in Syria; enabled through contacts with terrorists in Syria; and inspired online by Isil’s [ISIS] sophisticated exploitation of technology.”

Parker said MI5 must evolve its activities in order to combat modern threats, and emphasized that the agency’s ability to intercept communications has “been a key component in MI5’s toolbox throughout our history.”

The MI5 boss said he imagined the forthcoming defence review would garner more public interest than previous debates on similar matters. “But I hope that the public debate will be a mature one, ” he added. “Informed by the three independent reviews, and not characterized by ill-informed accusations of ‘mass surveillance’, or other such lazy two-worded tags.”

When it comes to the very similar requests by FBI Director, James Comey, his pleas are in earnest yet, tech companies and the U.S. Constitution actually prevent some actions due to the 1st Amendment. It is a slippery slope for both sides.

FBI Director James Comey called for a national conversation about how far tech companies should be allowed to go in applying encryption to their devices, saying law enforcement faces growing and overlapping challenges in accessing data needed to prosecute crimes.

During a speech at the Brookings Institution Thursday, Comey said the new forms of encryption being developed for mobile devices, as well as the rapid growth of the devices themselves, make it tough for the FBI to keep up with ways criminals can “go dark.”

“With going dark, those of us in law enforcement and public safety have a major fear of missing out,” Comey said. “Missing out on predators who exploit the most vulnerable among us; missing out on violent criminals who target our communities; missing out on a terrorist cell using social media to recruit, plan and execute an attack. We have seen case after case — from homicides and car crashes to drug trafficking, domestic abuse and child exploitation — where critical evidence came from smartphones, hard drives and online communication.”

To advance the discussion, Congress is holding hearings with counter-terrorism experts and they too make a compelling argument siding with Comey.

Camp Liberty under heavy attack

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Update that includes statement from Secretary of State John Kerry:

Washington (AFP) – US top diplomat John Kerry condemned an attack on a base that houses exiled Iranian opposition members on the outskirts of Baghdad, calling Thursday for the international community to help relocate its residents.

At least 15 missiles targeted Camp Liberty Thursday, a former US military base near Baghdad’s international airport, which houses members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, an opposition group that has been exiled since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

A spokesman for the Mujahedin said the attack was the worst to have targeted the camp so far, and claimed that several people were killed but could not say how many.

“The United States strongly condemns today’s brutal, senseless terrorist attack on Camp Hurriya that killed and injured camp residents,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement, using an alternate name for the camp.

“No matter the circumstances, on this point we remain absolute: the United States remains committed to assisting the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in the relocation of all Camp Hurriya residents to a permanent and safe location outside of Iraq,” he said.

“We call on more countries to assist in responding to this urgent humanitarian situation by welcoming camp residents for relocation and by contributing to the fund established by the United Nations to support their resettlement,” he added.

Meanwhile, a Paris based organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said in a statement that 23 people had died in the attack and that dozens more were injured, including 22 who were seriously hurt.

A representative from the group, Afchine Alavi, said all told, some 80 rockets landed at the camp. The Mujahedin sided with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the war with Iran in the 1980s but the 2003 US-led invasion brought leaders with ties to Tehran to power. The Mujahedin were moved to Camp Liberty after the 2011 US withdrawal.

“We have been in touch with senior Iraqi officials to ensure that the government of Iraq renders all possible medical and emergency assistance to the victims,” Kerry said, adding that the United States was in contact with the government for more details on the attack.

“Our condolences go out to the families of the victims, and we hope for the swift recovery of those injured,” he said.

Camp Liberty, Iraq has been housing Iranian dissidents for several years and Iran leadership has been quite aggressive in terminating this U.S. base.

NCRI Statements | Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty

URGENT: Camp Liberty under heavy attack

BREAKING News of up to 20 people killed at , under attack by ‘ian agents

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Thursday, 29 October 2015 19:05

 NCRIWomen’sCommittee‏@NCRI_Women_Comm 1h1 hour ago

the death toll in attack is not clear yet, over 10 names have been reported

 

Camp Liberty under heavy attack – No. 3

Urgent: Attack and very heavy missile barrage of Camp Liberty in Iraq

According to the latest information received from Camp Liberty, over 80 missiles of all types have been hit the camp that houses Iranian opposition members.
Craters as deep as 2 meters and 3.5 meter wide have been created in some impact areas.
The intensity of the explosions are to the extent that many housing units and their protective T-walls have been destroyed or fallen down.

 

URGENT: At least 20 PMOI members martyred in attack on Camp Liberty.

Camp Liberty under heavy attack – No. 2

Urgent: Attack and very heavy missile barrage of Camp Liberty in Iraq

According to initial reports, there has been a lot of damage and fire, but due to the darkness of night there is no confirmation of the number of those killed or injured.

A large number of trailers have caught fire and the PMOI members are using any means possible to them to extinguish the flames.
The names of a number of PMOI martyrs that have thus far been confirmed are as follows:
Mehdi Tavakol, Behzad Mirshahi, Hassan Adavi, Rajab Mohammadi, Reza Vadian, Sharif Veysi, Hossein Sarvazad, Ahmad Maschian, Jasem Qaseer, Nayereh Rabiee.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
October 29, 2015

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Camp Liberty under heavy attack – No. 1

Urgent: Attack and very heavy missile barrage of Camp Liberty in Iraq

Since 7:40 pm local time, Camp Liberty has come under the most severe attack and very heavy missile barrage.

Right now all electricity and communications are cut off.
Further reports will be made available as they are received.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
October 29, 2015