BAGHDAD — Gunmen in military uniforms burst into the offices of four independent newspapers in Baghdad, stabbing and beating employees, staff and officials said Tuesday.



One editor said he recognized the attackers as members of a Shiite militia, saying the raids came after his newspaper published an article criticizing a prominent hard-line cleric.



It underscored the dangers facing the media in Iraq, one of the most dangerous places in the world for reporters.



Also Tuesday, gunmen killed two men and kidnapped another in a trailer camp on a remote gas field near the Syria-Iraq frontier. Iraq intelligence officials say Al-Qaeda militants are growing stronger in the border region, taking advantage of the lawlessness on the edge of Syria’s civil war.



In Baghdad, some 50 assailants participated in the coordinated, brazen Monday evening attack, said Bassam Al-Sheikh and Ali Al-Daraji, two editors of newspapers whose offices were attacked.



The raiders attacked reporters with batons and knives and smashed computers and furniture in the offices of Al-Sheikh’s newspaper, Al-Dustour Al-Jadida, the editor said.



Al-Daraji said the attackers who came to his newspaper, Al-Mustaqila, smashed windows and set fire to a car. “It was so horrifying that we could not do anything,” he said.



A health official said four newspaper staffers were hospitalized with stab wounds and another was badly beaten. A police officer said an investigation was under way.



The four newspapers are considered medium-sized to small. The largest, Al-Dustour, claims a run of 12,000 copies daily.



In response to the attacks Tuesday, blue-khaki clad police set up checkpoints through the middle-class Karradeh neighborhood, snarling traffic. Other security forces in drab beige khaki, masked faces and heavy weaponry deployed on a main Baghdad thoroughfare.



Iraq is ranked among the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Hundreds were killed in the country since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. — AP