New protests break out in Iraq’s Sunni heartland

Also Wednesday, the United Nations mission to Iraq said its monitors have determined that a hospital that treated a member of an Iranian exile group who died this week at a refugee camp near Baghdad did not consider his health condition serious enough to warrant hospitalization when he arrived for treatment in November.

An organization representing the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq exile group on Monday accused Iraqi authorities of preventing 56-year-old Behrooz Rahimian from being hospitalized, and it alleged that the United Nations failed to take sufficient steps to intervene. Iraq considers the MEK a terrorist group and wants its members out of the country.

The U.N. mission in Baghdad said in a statement Wednesday that it “does not have any indication so far that treatment was obstructed by the Iraqi authorities.” It noted that representatives for the refugee residents told U.N. monitors thatRahimian “appeared to be in good condition until the time of his death.”

• Associated Press writers Adam Schreck and Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this article.

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