KARACHI, Dec 2: The offices of a media group came under attack here on Monday causing injury to a security guard and damaging few parked vehicles. It was the second attack on the group’s offices in the city’s Qayumabad area in four months.

Police and officials of the media house said that four men on two motorcycles first threw a cracker and than started firing from the adjacent KPT flyover.

The Express Media group owns the Express Tribune, Express TV channel, Urdu daily Express and Sindh Express. The firing continued for some time.

In the first attack on the group on August 16 this year, two employees were shot at and injured. After that attack, a police mobile was deployed outside the offices, but later withdrawn.

“The possible motive of the gun-cum-cracker attack could be to harass journalists and to create an impression that law and order situation is not satisfactory. This might have been done by the people who did not want to see peace in the metropolis,” DIG South Abdul Khaliq Shaikh said.

About the previous attack, he said the assailants had remained ‘untraced’. “Now we have decided to reopen the previous case” to see if there is similarity in the two cases and also if Monday’s attack was in continuation of the earlier attack and also to determine the motive, Mr Shaikh said.

“We consider this incident an attack on freedom of media and freedom of expression,” Editor the Express Tribune, Kamal Siddiqi, said.

Meanwhile, a bomb disposal squad official told Dawn that a ‘tennis-ball cracker’ ‘also containing ball-bearings’ had been hurled.

The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists condemned the attack and announced that it would observe a ‘black day’ on Tuesday and hold a protest demonstration outside the Karachi Press Club.