Militiamen kill 11 at TV station in Iraq (Sadrites Attack)
AP ^ | October 12 2006 | LEE KEATH
newsone.ca
Suspected Shiite militiamen, some dressed as police, broke into a television station and gunned down 11 Iraqi executives, producers and other staffers Thursday — the deadliest attack against the media in this country, where at least 81 other journalists have been killed in the past three years.
In another attack on Iraqi media, the body of a Kurdish radio reporter was identified at the Baghdad morgue.
About two dozen gunmen, some in police uniform, pulled up to the Shaabiya offices at 7 a.m. Thursday in civilian cars, stormed into the building and killed most of those inside, said the station‘s executive director, Hassan Kamil, who was not there at the time.
Among the dead were the station‘s chairman of the board, Abdul-Raheem Nasrallah, along with station technicians and two guards, Kamil said. Several employees managed to run away, and there were two wounded survivors — the program director and chief producer — who were in critical condition.
There were also rumors that the station was being financed by Libya. Reporters Without Borders said the militiamen may have been seeking to avenge the kidnapping of a revered Lebanese Shiite cleric, Imam Musa al-Sadr, 28 years ago, an attack often blamed on Libya. Al-Sadr is a distant uncle of Muqtada al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi Army, Iraq‘s most feared militia.
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