March 27, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 23, 1424

BRUSSELS, March 26: The head of the world’s biggest journalists’ organization and the Amnesty International said on Wednesday a US bomb and missile attack on Iraqi television was an attempt at censorship and may have breached the Geneva Conventions.

“I think there should be a clear international investigation into whether or not this bombing violates the Geneva Conventions,” Aidan White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), told Reuters.

“We have every reason to believe this is an act of censorship against media that US politicians and military strategists don’t like,” he said.

A US official in Washington earlier said the raid had hit the main television station, a key telecommunications vault and Baghdad satellite communications, damaging the government’s command and control capability.

Human rights group Amnesty International also condemned the attack on Iraqi television, saying it might constitute a war crime.

“The bombing of a television station simply because it is being used for the purposes of propaganda is unacceptable,” Amnesty’s Senior Director for International Law Claudio Cordone said in a statement.—AFP