The head of the main journalists' association in Iraq survived an assassination attempt on Saturday when a bomb exploded outside his office in the capital Baghdad, his colleague said. Muayad al-Lami, the chief of the Iraqi Journalists' Union, was rushed to hospital after he was wounded in the blast at the gates of the union building in the northern Waziriyah neighborhood. "He was seeing off three guests when an IED (improvised explosive device) exploded in front of the gate," colleague Hassan al-Abudi said. "He was wounded and taken to hospital along with his guests who were also wounded." "Some vehicles outside caught fire and it shattered all the glass in the building," union member Hassan al-Aboudi, who was in the building at the time, said. Police said six people had been wounded in the blast. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Lami's predecessor, Shihab al-Timimi, died four days after being shot in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad in February. Lami was elected as the head of the union at July elections.
Iraq is regarded as the one of the world's most dangerous places for journalists. According to the Iraqi Journalism Freedom Observatory, an organization for the defense of media workers' rights in Iraq, at least 243 media workers have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003. In one of the worst attacks, gunmen kidnapped and shot dead three Iraqi reporters from Iraq's Sharqiya TV station and their driver in the volatile northern city of Mosul a week ago.