A suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle in front of the Baghdad bureau of Al-Arabiya TV on Monday, killing at least four people and wounding at least sixteen others, media reports said.

Three security guards and a female cleaner were reportedly among the dead.

The suicide bomber, who was driving a white minivan, managed to traverse a security gate into the premises before blowing himself up.

“The intensity of the bomb and its timing means that it was intended to destroy the whole office and kill everyone there. It was a professionally planned attack,” the station said in a statement on its website. “Iraq’s internal security forces have discovered the identity of the perpetrator(s) but they did not specify if s/he or they belong(s) to any known militant group operating in the country.”

The attack has been blamed on Al-Qaeda, and comes a month after Iraqi authorities warned the station of an impending attack, which prompted the station to temporarily close its offices.

The popular Saudi-owned and Dubai-based regional satellite television channel has been the victim of numerous threats and attacks in Iraq. Two years ago, Baghdad bureau chief Jawad Hattab escaped a car bomb attack. In October 2006, seven were killed and many more injured when Al-Arabiya’s former premises were targeted in a car bomb attack. The same year, three of the channels journalists were abducted and killed while covering a mosque bombing in Samarra.

At least 169 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the United States invasion in March 2003, according to the IPI Death Watch.

“IPI is outraged by the attack against the Al-Arabiya television station in Baghdad,” said IPI Director David Dadge. “Although the number of journalists being killed because of their work in Iraq has fallen, Monday’s attack is brutal evidence of the continuing threat to their lives. The Iraqi authorities must undertake every effort to implement the rule of law, to ensure that killers are brought to trial, and that journalists may report without fear of assassination.”

In June 2009, the Iranian authorities ordered Al-Arabiya to shut down its Tehran office following the station’s coverage of the disputed presidential elections. In March 2010, Yemeni authorities seized equipment from Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, accusing the two broadcasters of exaggerated coverage of the separatist movement in the South.