Iraqis cast ballots in regional elections Saturday amid tight security, marking the country's first vote since the U.S. military withdrawal and a key test of its stability.
Former top U.S. officials denounced the State Department, the United Nations and Iraq for failing to protect unarmed Iranian dissidents in a camp near Baghdad and blamed Iran for a weekend rocket attack that killed six refugees and wounded 50.
The top U.N. official in Iraq directed his staff to cover up the prisonlike conditions of a relocation camp for Iranian dissidents in reports to the world body, said a former U.N. official who has resigned in protest.
Iranian dissidents at a camp north of Baghdad allege that the Iraqi government is preparing a “concentration camp” to which they are to be relocated under a United Nations-brokered plan.
The United Nations and the Iraqi government have reached a deal to transfer more than 3,000 Iranian dissidents living in a camp north of Baghdad, potentially averting what international observers have warned would be a massacre.
A U.N. envoy on Thursday offered to broker the peaceful closing of a camp for Iranian exiles in Iraq where residents and U.S. lawmakers say an Iraqi military crackdown may be imminent.
