About 26 people have died after a former Iraqi military base, housing exiled Iranian opposition members, came under intense rocket fire.

The People’s Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) says 23 of its members and three policemen were killed in the attack on camp liberty, near Baghdad airport.

The PMOI has been in exile since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.

An Iraqi Shia militia, the Mukhtar Army, claimed the latest attack.

Mukhtar Army leader, Wathiq al-Battat, said his group had frequently warned the PMOI to “leave Iraqi soil as soon as possible”.

The United States (US) designated the PMOI as a terrorist organisation in 1997, but took it off its blacklist in 2012, in view of its “public renunciation of violence”.