Kurdish reporters also victimized in recent clashes of Iraq Iraq’s Kurdish media victims of political crisis Reporters Without Borders http://www.rsf.org/irak- iraq -s-kurdish-media-victims-of-17-07-2014, 46649.html Middle East/North Africa - Iraq 17 July 2014 News media and journalists are being hit hard by the chaos reigning in Iraq and the mounting tension between Kurds who are demanding Prime Minister Nouri Al- Maliki’s resignation and Maliki, who accuses Iraqi Kurdistan of serving as a rear base for terrorism. One of the highest-profile cases has been an attack on the headquarters of Al-Taakhi, an Arabic-language daily based in Karrada (Bagdad), that supports the PDK, one of Kurdistan’s two ruling parties, and is run by Masoud Barzani, Kurdistan’s president. Unidentified gunmen stormed it on 15 July, threatened the journalists present with reprisals if they did not stop working, and left with cars, mobile phones, broadcast equipment, around 15 computers, files and 8 million Iraqi dinars (about 5,000 euros) in cash. Al-Taakhi editor Badirkhan Sandi said the assailants arrived in police cars and wore the uniforms of the Iraqi security forces. He announced the next day that he was temporarily suspending operations in order to ensure the safety of all of his employees. Journalists’ associations and organizations that defend the right to information have been unanimous in their condemnation of the attack on Al-Taakhi. The national journalists’ union said: “Since three years, attacks of this kind are not the subject of any investigation and those responsible continue to go unpunished”. The prosecutor’s office nonetheless insisted that the interior ministry had ordered an investigation to determine the exact circumstances of the attack. As the climate continues to worsen, official bodies have also stepped up verbal attacks on the Kurdish media.  http://www.mojahedin.org/