Militants Kill Four Iraqi Journalists in TV Assault, Military Forces Attack Islamist Camps
Four suicide bombers attacked a local television station headquarters north of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least four journalists, police officers said.
Two of the bombers blew themselves up, while security forces killed two others when they stormed the building, the officers said.
At least five people were also wounded in the incident.
The attack on the TV station came after a December 16 assault by militants on the Tikrit city council headquarters, in which a council member and two police were killed.
Iraq has come in for repeated criticism over the lack of media freedom and the number of unsolved killings of journalists.
With the latest violence, 11 Iraqi journalists have been killed in attacks in less than three months.
Later on Monday, the Iraqi military attacked camps belonging to an al-Qaida-linked militant group in Anbar province, destroying two, the defense ministry said.
After locating camps with surveillance aircraft, Iraqi forces launched "successful strikes... resulting in the destruction of two camps in the desert of Anbar," spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said in an statement.
Askari told Agence France Presse on Sunday that the civil war in neighboring Syria was driving violence in Iraq.
Aerial photographs and other information pointed to "the arrival of weapons and advanced equipment from Syria to the desert of western Anbar and the border of Nineveh province," he said.
This has encouraged Al-Qaeda-linked militants to "revive some of their camps that were eliminated by security forces in 2008 and 2009," Askari said, adding that aerial photos showed 11 militant camps near the border with Syria.
"Photographs and intelligence information indicate that whenever there is pressure on armed groups in Syria, they withdraw to Iraq... to regroup and then carry out terrorist operations in the two countries," Askari said.
Violence in the country has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was emerging from a period of brutal sectarian killings.
More than 6,650 people have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the year, according to Agence France Presse figures based on security and medical sources.
Source: Agence France Presse
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