Al-Jazeera office attacked in Egypt protests

Source Guardian (UK)

The Cairo office of al-Jazeera was ransacked by pro-government "thugs" today, as the Arabic language news channel also said its news website had come under attack by hackers. Al-Jazeera said its office had been stormed by a "gang of thugs" who burned equipment, on a day of reports of escalating violence against journalists covering the Egyptian uprising. The Qatar-based broadcaster added that the attacks appeared to be an attempt by "the Egyptian regime or its supporters" to hinder its widely watched coverage of the uprising in Egypt. It said its website had been hacked earlier today with a banner advertisement replaced with a slogan "Together for the collapse of Egypt", which linked through to a web page with content critical of the network. The banner remained in place for two hours. "Our website has been under relentless attack since the onset of the uprisings in Egypt [and] we are currently investigating what happened today," said a spokesman for al-Jazeera. "While the deliberate attacks this morning were an attempt to discredit us we will continue our impartial and comprehensive coverage of these unprecedented events."