Newspaper downtown office attacked

BAGHDAD, Sept. 21 (Iraqi News) – An explosive charge on Sunday detonated near the building of Hezbollah- Iraq Organization’s mouthpiece newspaper in central Baghdad, the Society to Defend Press Freedom in Iraq said. “The chairman of al-Bayyina newspaper’s board, Issa al-Sayyid Jaafar, informed the Society to Defend Press Freedom in Iraq that an improvised explosive device (IED) planted near the newspaper building on al-Nidhal Street, downtown Baghdad, detonated but did not leave any casualties,” according to a statement released by the society and received by IraqiNews.com – Voices of Iraq – (Iraqi News). The explosion caused damage to the building, the statement noted. Jaafar pointed the finger at “terrorist groups” that he said seek to silence honest journalists and writers who uncover their crimes. Journalists and press institutions have recently become the target of suicide bombings and blasts in Iraq. Yesterday, an official source from the press syndicate said that an explosive charge planted by unknown men at the entrance of the syndicate building in Baghdad’s northern area of al-Waziriya detonated at 11:00 a.m. during a syndicate board meeting, slightly wounding a number of civilians, including the syndicate chief, Muayyad al-Lami. One week ago, security forces in Ninewa found the bodies of four al-Sharqiya TV station staff who had been kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in western Mosul. The staff had been kidnapped while they were filming an episode of a Ramadan program, called Futurokom Alayna (Your Iftar is on us), on al-Pepsi street in the western Mosul district of al-Zanjili. Over 10 days ago, the head of the al-Arabiya news channel bureau in Baghdad, Jawad al-Hattab, survived an assassination attempt when a sticky improvised explosive device attached to the undercarriage of his vehicle went off in a parking lot in central Baghdad.   SS (S) 1