Yusef Jalali
Press TV, Tehran
Having lost over 17,000 people in terror attacks, Iran is a major victim of terrorism. Press TV has visited an Iranian family that was exposed to a terror attack carried out by a formidable US-backed terror group, known as the MKO.
The saying goes that oblivion is a bliss, but to 29-year-old Mohammad, it's hard to forget a dark memory that not only left him handicapped, but took away all his childhood dreams.
Some 22 years ago, Mohammad and his parents were on a motorbike in a bustling neighborhood in Iran's southwestern city of Ahwaz, when a shell fired by a terrorist group landed next to them, injuring the whole family.
Mohammad, who was only seven back then, lost his left leg and developed cardiac problems.He still lives with the pain, both physically and mentally.
Mohammad is one of thousands of Iranians who have fallen victim to terrorist attacks, mostly carried out by the MKO terror group.
The terrorist organization is responsible for the killing of 12,000 Iranians out of a total of 17,000 victims of terror attacks in the country.
Since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, the MKO has carried out a series of bombings and assassinations against Iran and fought alongside Iraqi forces in the eight-year Iraq- Iran war in the 1980s.
In 2012, the terror group was relocated from an American military base in Iraq to Albania and France, after the US and Europe delisted the group as a terrorist organization.
Ten years ago, Mohammad filed a lawsuit against the terrorist group at a French court, but to no avail.
It's so painful to recount one's agonies, especially when it comes to mothers seeing their children suffer; that's why I preferred not to ask Mohammad's mom for comment.
But she says she's been trying to find an answer to this question through all these years; no word other than “terrorists” can describe those who deprived a child of his childhood.