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Following the mortar attack on Command HQ of the Revolutionary Guards Corps and that of Rahim Safavi, the Guards' Commander in Chief, the clerical regime has embarked on an intense propaganda campaign and stage-managing, claiming that a residential area had been hit and a few civilians had been injured.
A Tehran-based journalist said: "Because the security forces have cordoned off the region and prohibit anyone from entering the area, reports and figures are only announced by official sources and people cannot make any other observations." (Radio Liberty, March 13).
At the same time, a number of foreign journalists based in Tehran quoted a local reporter as saying "several mortars did fall there [in the Guards Complex] as well. " (BBC World, March 13).
Voice of America quoted a journalist affiliated with the regime as saying that the target of the Mojahedin attack was the "Sarollah Garrison" home to "the Revolutionary Guards' crack forces" and that "fortunately, there were no casualties among civilians." (VOA, March 13).
Reuters quoted a witness as saying that one of the wounded had been injured in the leg at "the Guards complex". The man, Mohammad-Mehdi Kayzari, is an officer of the Revolutionary Guards based in Sarollah Garrison, and is undergoing treatment in Baghiatollah Hospital, a hospital used exclusively by the Guards personnel
A Mojahedin spokesman said: The People's
Mojahedin Organization calls for the dispatch to Tehran of an international
fact-finding mission, accompanied by a Mojahedin representative, in order
to visit the site where the mortars landed and talk to those the regime
alleges to have been injured.
Clerical Regime's Reconnaissance Plane Shot Down, Reuters, March 15
BAGHDAD - Iraqi air defenses have shot down an Iranian pilotless reconnaissance plane near the border with Iran, the Iraqi news agency INA reported on Wednesday.
The Iranian opposition group Mujahideen Khalq said Iran had in recent days stepped up reconnaissance flights over its camps inside Iraq along the border with Iran.
"In the past few days there has been several reconnaissance flights by the Iranian air force over different National Liberation Army camps," a spokesman for the group, Farid Soleimani, told Reuters.
"Today an Iranian F5 fighter bomber tried to enter Iraqi air space in the central sector of the Iraq-Iran border but was repelled," he said.
The Mujahideen said on Tuesday that Iranian warplanes attacked one of its bases inside the Iraqi border but were forced to flee by the group's anti-aircraft units.
"The Iranian regime is carrying out
these aggressions as an act of despair," Soleimani said.
Clash With Anti-Riot Police in Tehran Fire Festival, Agence France Presse, March 15 TEHRAN - Police riot squads clashed with young Iranians celebrating an age-old fire festival frowned on by the regime's conservatives, local residents said.
Groups of youths in the eastern Tehran suburb of Tehran Pars smashed shop and bank windows when police tried to stop them lighting bonfires or throwing firecrackers in the street. Before dispersing they shouted slogans hostile to Iran's leaders.
The head of the Tehran fire brigade,
Ali Akbar Mohammadi, told the official news agency IRNA that some 40 people,
mainly young, had been injured and most were hospitalized.
The Time Bomb is Ticking, Asr-e Azadegan (Pro-Khatami Daily), March13
The news bangs on the head like a hammer: Saeed Hajjarian is assassinated...
The time bomb of the gentlemen has started ticking... Losing social basis and political power day by day, those who praise violence have started their death game. But this game is unquestionably their most dangerous risk. This time they will be annihilated in the hurricane of public opinion. If they are lucky enough, they will be eliminated only from the political history of Iran...
The knowledgeable, Moslem gentlemen officially and openly teach the theory of violence in Friday prayers. In Tehran and Qom, they chant "Saeed Hajjarian should be executed". And in open daylight, in the middle of a street, Saeed Hajjarian is assassinated by riders of a motorbike, which is only usable by the permit of particular organizations...
Again and as in the past, the gentlemen
and the great ones who sharpen the knives of political butchers and give
firing order to violence-loving dwarfs will shed crocodile's tears as of
tomorrow, calling the assassination of Hajjarian the plot of foreigners.