Iraq journalists killed in suicide assault on TV: police

TIKRIT, Iraq - Agence France-Presse

Four suicide bombers attacked a local television station headquarters north of Baghdad on Monday, killing two journalists, police officers said.
 
Security forces have launched an assault to clear the Salaheddin television building, the officers said.
 
Some journalists managed to escape the building, while others were still trapped inside.
 
"I managed to escape, and I am outside the building, and the third and the fourth floors are on fire now," a Salaheddin TV journalist told AFP by telephone.
 
"Some of my colleagues are trapped in the building, among them two women. I am calling them on their mobile phones and they are not answering," he said.
 
A journalist from Iraqiya state TV, which has an office in the same building, said he too was able to escape, but that others were still in the building.
 
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 , nine Iraqi journalists have been killed in attacks in less than three months.
 
Violence in the country has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just 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 AFP figures based on security and medical sources.