Tehran - Iraqi security guards fired shots in the air and four people were injured as hundreds of Iraqi opponents of President Saddam Hussein attacked the Iraqi embassy here yesterday, Iraqi opposition sources said.
Some 1,000 protesters threw stones at the mission and tried to scale the surrounding walls and get inside, according to the Tehran-based Iraqi opposition group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Iraqi security guards fired about 15 shots into the air to try to force the demonstrators back, they said. Four people were slightly hurt when Iranian police moved in to disperse the crowd.
Earlier yesterday several hundred Iraqis demonstrated outside the UN building here against last week's assassination in Iraq of a senior Shia Muslim cleric, Ayatollah Mohammad Sadek al-Sadr, and Baghdad's crackdown on subsequent Shia protests, which left up to 100 dead.