AL-JAZEERA’S CAIRO BUREAU CHIEF ARRESTED

The head of al-Jazeera’s bureau in Cairo, Abdel Fattah Fayed, and a reporter for the Qatar-based news network, Mohammed Fawi, were arrested by Egyptian security forces, the network said on its website today (Saturday). UPDATE: They were released several hours later, Reuters reported. The arrests occurred a day after unprecedented attacks on the news media by pro-government mobs in the Egyptian capital, which included the storming of al-Jazeera’s office. “The office has been burned along with the equipment inside it,” the channel said in a statement. Earlier in the week, the government ordered al-Jazeera to halt its broadcasts and canceled the accreditation of its journalists, maintaining that it was broadcasting false and malicious reports about the government. Nevertheless, the channel continues its nonstop coverage of the events unfolding in the besieged nation. Meanwhile, several U.S. television reporters have fled the country after they were attacked by pro-Mubarak mobs on Thursday and Friday. Before he departed, Fox News reporter Greg Palkot filed a harrowing report of being beaten by pro-Mubarak “thugs” and later blindfolded and detained by Egyptian soldiers. CBS News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Lara Logan flew back to Washington Friday night after she and her news crew were arrested at gunpoint by Egyptian security forces on Friday as they were photographing a crowd outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo. NBC anchor Bryan Williams and CBS anchor Katie Couric each left the country as the pro-government supporters focused their anger on journalists in general and on Western journalists in particular. France’s Canal+ said that two of its reporters who were arrested on Thursday have still not been heard from.