Truck bomb knocks Baghdad TV station off air

Baghdad, Apr 5: A Baghdad satellite television station run by Iraq's biggest Sunni political party briefly went off the air today after a suicide truck bomb exploded nearby, killing one person and wounding three.

''A garbage truck targeted the Baghdad TV channel building.

It has stopped broadcasting,'' an Iraqi Islamic Party official told Reuters.

After an interruption lasting about 30 minutes, the channel resumed broadcasting and said ten people had been wounded, four of them critically. It did not make clear whether they were members of staff.

Police said the truck bomb exploded between the National Security Centre and the television station in Jamiaa district in western Baghdad.

Iraqi journalists are frequent targets for attack amid deepening sectarian violence between Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites that has killed tens of thousands.

In January 2006, a Baghdad TV journalist was killed while filming an attack by US forces in Ramadi. Gunmen also shot dead a presenter and another employee in two separate incidents in the same year.

REUTERS