DUBAI - Iran's main opposition group said it had fired rocket-propelled grenades on Monday at a police station in the capital Tehran, near a high-security area where several Iranian leaders live.

A spokesman for the People's Mojahedin Organization told Reuters in Dubai that the attack had inflicted "heavy damage and casualties" on the police station in the northern suburb of Shemiran.

Residents of the district, near Jamaran where residences of senior leaders are located, said they had heard a loud blast.

The Mojahedin said the raid was the 14th it had launched in retaliation to Iran's missile attack on the group's bases in Iraq on Wednesday.

Iraq has said Iran fired 56 Scud missiles at Mojahedin camps, killing six people and wounding several others. The group has said one of its members had been killed.

Iran threatened to launch more strikes against rebel bases in Iraq unless they ceased attacks deep inside the Islamic republic.
 

Iraq Chaarges Iran With Repeated Cease-Fire Violations, Associated Press, April 23

UNITED NATIONS - Iraq accused Iran of more than 60 violations of a cease-fire the two neighbors agreed to in 1988, in a letter to the U.N. Security Council released Monday.

The letter, signed by Iraqi Ambassador Mohammad Al-Douri, documents 61 incidents Iraq says occurred between Jan. 1 and March 8 that went against the 1988 U.N.-brokered cease-fire that ended eight years of fighting.

The allegations from Baghdad come less than a week after Iran acknowledged its armed forces had attacked the bases of the rebel Mojahedin Khalq. The attack killed three people and wounded 23 others, Iraqi official media and the Mojahedin Khalq said. All but one of the casualties were Iraqis.

The Iranian missile attacks were followed by Iraqi reports of two Iranian reconnaissance planes being shot down on the Iraqi side of the border.

Although this attack wasn't included in the Iraqi letter, it detailed dozens of other instances described as "continued violations of the cease-fire resolution" committed by Iran in the first three months of this year.

The list included movements of Iranian soldiers near the Iraqi border, gunfire and mortar attacks, the establishment of new observation posts and the killing of an unarmed civilian in a fishing boat.
 

Court Convicts 121 of Rioting in Western Iran, Associated Press, April 23

TEHRAN - A provincial court has convicted 121 people, including a deputy governor, of riots in western Iran that left one policeman dead last year, the state-run radio reported Monday.

Out of 211 people charged in connection with five days of unrest in Khorramabad, 300 miles southwest of Tehran, 121 were found guilty of participating in the riots, 84 were found not guilty and six cases were still pending, Allahyar Malekshahi, a provincial judicial official, said.

[In August of last year, in the course of seven-day anti-government riots, widespread clashes between thousands of demonstrators, including young students from across the country, and the regime's suppressive agents took place in Khorramabad.]
 

Serial Murders of Women May Be Politically Motivated: MP, Agence France Presse, April 23

TEHRAN - Iran's national security committee believes the murders of 12 prostitutes in the holy city of Mashhad may have been politically motivated, an MP who sits on the committee said Monday.

Ali Tajernia, cited by the official IRNA news agency, said the committee rejected explanations it heard from security and police officials during an inquiry to address the killings which have rocked Iran's second city.

At least 12 prostitutes have been found strangled under similar circumstances in recent months. They were choked with their mandatory Islamic headscarves and their bodies then wrapped in their head-to-toe cloaks.

Tehran's Hamshahri paper said earlier this month that 26 victims in all have been found in northeastern Khorassan province, of which Mashhad is the capital, in the past three years.

[The Women's Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in an April 21 statement called on all international organizations defending human and women's rights to condemn the heinous chain murder of oppressed women in Mashad, northeast Iran.

["The clerical regime and its criminal gangs are behind these cold-blooded murders. According to the state-run dailies, the number of the victims since last August has reached 12, all of whom have been murdered in an identical and professional manner," it said.

[The statement added: "The tragic and painful plight of these women offers a glimpse of oppression and discrimination practiced by the mullahs' corrupt and misogynous regime. Between 20 and 45 years of age, all of the victims were homeless, jobless widows, spending most of their time on the streets."]

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