BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Six rockets were fired on a residential quarter in Baghdad, injuring eight civilians and damaging several houses, the official Iraqi News Agency reported Tuesday.
INA blamed Iranian agents for the attack and said it took place Monday evening. It coincided with a mortar attack on the headquarters of the national police in the Iranian capital, Tehran, and surrounding areas. The Iraq-based rebel group, Mujahedeen Khalq, claimed responsibility for the Tehran attack, which injured several people.The Iraqi News Agency blamed the Baghdad attack on a "stray group of hirelings connected to the organs of the Iranian regime." It quoted an unnamed security spokesman and said six guided rockets fell on houses and apartment buildings, injuring eight women and children.
It said Iraq holds "the Iranian authorities responsible for this criminal operation and reserves the right to revenge at the appropriate time."
Previously, bomb and rocket attacks in Baghdad were confined to the headquarters and offices of the Iranian rebels harbored by Iraq. The rebels have several military camps near the border with Iran equipped with tanks, armored personnel carriers and helicopter gunships.
The Mujahedeen spokesman in Baghdad, Fareed Sulaimani, called the rocket attack on Baghdad "an inhuman crime."
Monday's attack was the second on Baghdad in less than two months.
On March 22, a mortar attack on an apartment building in the Baladiyat district mainly inhabited by Palestinian refugees in Iraq killed four people and injured 38. Iraq also blamed Iran for the shelling.
Iraq and Iran fought an eight-year war that ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire in 1988. The two Muslim neighbors never signed a peace treaty, and their relations since the end of the war have remained tense.