Monday, Jul 26, 2010
(Raises toll, adds quotes, detail on explosives)
BAGHDAD (AFP)--A suspected Al-Qaeda suicide bomber blew up a car by the Baghdad offices of Al-Arabiya television killing four people Monday, a month after the Saudi-funded channel was warned of insurgent threats.
The bomber struck at around 9:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) in front of the station's bureau in the city centre, leaving a massive crater and sending a plume of smoke into the air that could be seen from several kilometers away.
Majid Hamid, a journalist for the pan-Arab satellite channel, said four people had been killed in the attack--three security guards and a female office assistant.
An interior ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, put the casualty toll at three dead and 16 wounded. Former deputy prime minister Salam al-Zawbayi and two of his guards were among the wounded.
"There was a huge explosion that shook the building--all the rooms were damaged," Al-Arabiya journalist Tareq Maher told the channel in a live broadcast.
The street in front of the channel's offices was covered in shards of glass and debris, and nearby buildings showed signs of damage as did several cars.
Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Atta accused Al-Qaeda of being behind the attack.
"These are the methods of Al-Qaeda," he told AFP. "The goal of this operation was to attract media attention."
Atta said that the explosives-laden vehicle had passed through a checkpoint after being searched by security guards. He suggested that there may have been "co-operation" between the car's driver and the guards.
Major General Jihad al-Jaabari, the head of the Iraqi army's explosives handling unit, said the bomber was an Iraqi and added that the vehicle was carrying more than 100 kilograms of ammonium nitrate.
Monday's bombing was the latest sign of the threat facing journalists working in Iraq, and came just a month after Al-Arabiya closed its Baghdad offices citing government warnings of a threat of insurgent attack.
A total of 249 media workers have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, according to the Iraq-based Journalism Freedom Observatory.
Al-Arabiya itself has been no stranger to attack by suspected Sunni Arab insurgents or pressure from Iraq's Shiite-led government.
In September 2008, its Baghdad bureau chief Jawad Hattab escaped unharmed after spotting a bomb attached to his car before it was detonated by remote control.
In October 2006, a car bomb targeting the channel's then bureau killed seven people and wounded 20.
And in February 2006, Al-Arabiya presenter Atwar Bahjat and two of her colleagues were kidnapped and murdered in the mainly Sunni town of Samarra north of Baghdad as they covered the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine, an attack claimed by Al-Qaeda.
The channel's ownership by Saudi and other Gulf investors has also made it the focus of suspicions by Iraq's Shiite-led government that its news agenda reflects the concerns of their Sunni governments.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
26-07-10 0942GMT
