Another Day in Baghdad: TV Station Raided 11 Media Workers Killed, page 1

They came 7 o'clock in the morning in 5 SUVs and a pick-up. Some of the gunmen wore police uniforms and they were all masked, eyewitnesses tell. They raided the building of Al Shabbiya, a new satellite television station. The employees had been conducting tests and been preparing for its debut broadcast set to this Saturday. The news outlet is one of more than 20 Iraqi satellite channels that have sprung up after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, this one a secular station, is set up for a Sunni audience. The gunmen shot everyone they found, excecusion style, with a single bullet. Only a father sleeping with his two daughters on the roof was overlooked.

news.bbc.co.uk
Gunmen have killed 11 people in an attack on the offices of a new satellite TV channel in Baghdad, Iraqi officials say.
The victims, thought to be security guards and technicians, died in the raid on the Shaabiya channel in Zayouna in the east of Iraq's capital.

The channel has so far only broadcast test messages and is said to be aimed at a largely Sunni Muslim audience.

Hassan Kamil, executive manager of Shaabiya, said masked gunmen - some also wearing police uniforms - raided the station at about 0700 local time (0400 GMT).

He said some of the staff had been sleeping there overnight. They were shot dead in their beds, many with a single bullet to the head or chest.

Among the dead was the station's board chairman, Abd al-Rahim Nasrullah, who was also the leader of the small nationalist political party to which the Shaabiya was affiliated.

Two survivors who were wounded managed to escape, police said.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

More than 130 journalists, have been killed since the start of the 2003 occupation according to the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, and most of them have been Iraqis. Yesterday's carnage represents an disproportionate high share in the statistics. With a genocide going on and the anarchy of tribal/civil war spreading, I'm afraid it is yet to peak.

Apart from the ongoing ethnic and tribal killings, the strategy seems clear. Now not only members of authories are targeted, but a balanced impartial press - what democracy is all about - is threatened. The motives seem clear enough, to prevent any balanced news from getting out of the Babylonian morass.

No wonder the people of Iraq start longing back to the days of Saddam. At least then they knew who their enemies were. As it is now everyone becomes a terrorist one way or another, sooner or later.

Before the core of the problem is addressed, what triggers this terror, no progress can be made. It will only get worse. With the WMDs failing, the democracy issue is the cheapest ground any war ever has been fought on. Democracy is something it takes generations to build. But only an instant to lose.

Related News Links:
www.nytimes.com
english.aljazeera.net

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Hundreds of Iraqi Police Fall Ill Simultaneously - Poison Suspected
655,000 Iraqis killed since start of war

[edit on 13/10/06 by khunmoon]