Gunmen in police cars and police uniforms stormed the offices of an Iraqi satellite television channel in Baghdad on Thursday and killed all inside, shooting them or slitting their throats in the deadliest attack on journalists in Iraq, according to witnesses and the Interior Ministry.
Many of the 11 killed in the 7 a.m. raid on Shaabiya television were shot as they lay sleeping in their beds at the station. Neighbors said they heard no gunfire, leading the station’s executive director, Hassan Kamil, to tell state-allied al-Iraqiya television that he believed silencers had been used.
“The killing police left the scene after killing those Iraqis,” said Saad Saleem, a 43-year-old teacher who lives near the house where the station is. Gesturing at police who responded to cordon off the station after the killings, Saleem said: “These police arrived only later. For us, Iraqis, we cannot tell the difference.”
The attackers killed two guards outside and then attacked the workers inside. The dead included Abdul Raheem Nasrallah, the channel’s general director and the general secretary of a small, secular political party, the Progress and Justice Movement.
The Shaabiya workers had spent the night at the station because of a long-standing Baghdad curfew that bans overnight vehicle traffic. The station had yet to begin regular programming, playing only patriotic music.
Suspicion fell on militiamen connected with the Shiite Muslim religious parties that lead Iraq’s government, either in the police force itself or working with the aid of the police, who are predominantly Shiite.
There was no explanation for why the station was targeted. One theory suggested that because the station was playing nationalist tunes, it had created the impression that it favored Sunni Arabs, although the slain station executive was Shiite.
Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based organization, cited unidentified local sources as saying the station may have been hit because it received funding from Libya. Many Shiites blame Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi for the assassination of a revered Shiite cleric in Lebanon nearly three decades ago.
A total of 118 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to Reporters Without Borders. The vast majority of them were Iraqi.
In all Thursday, at least 34 Iraqis were killed in violence around the country, including the Shaabiya attack, The Associated Press reported. The Interior Ministry said the bodies of 42 men or boys were found dumped around Baghdad in the previous 24 hours.
