Islamabad: Unidentified gunmen attacked a
team of a TV news channel in Peshawar city of northwest
Pakistan, critically injuring a senior journalist, police said
on Monday.
The team from AVT Khyber News channel was attacked by
three armed men, who assaulted the journalists and then fired
at them.
The channel's bureau chief, Hazrat Khan Mohmand, was
seriously injured when the attackers hit him with stones and
bricks on his head, police said.
The journalists were attacked on the busy Jail Road
just after they had visited provincial Education Minister
Sardar Hussain Babak at Lady Reading Hospital this afternoon.
Babak was injured when militants ambushed his vehicle
last night.
Mohmand was taken to Lady Reading Hospital, where
doctors said he was stable and out of danger.
The incident was condemned by journalists’ groups
across Pakistan.
They described it as an attack on the freedom of the
press.
The journalists' groups said the media would not be
silenced through such cowardly attacks.
Three police station chiefs in Peshawar were recently
suspended for attacks on an Urdu daily and for manhandling the
team of a private TV channel.
PTI
First Published: Monday, August 22, 2011, 23:17