A former top British official has admitted he advised Prime Minister Tony Blair to bomb the Arabic television network Al Jazeera during the opening months of the Iraq war. In an interview with Britain’s Channel Four, former Home Secretary David Blunkett says he told Blair to strike Al Jazeera’s transmitting equipment because it was broadcasting “propaganda”. Blunkett explained: “There wasn’t a worry from me because I believed that this was a war and in a war you wouldn’t allow the broadcast to continue taking place.” Two weeks after Blunkett recommended the attack, the US military bombed Al Jazeera’s office in Baghdad, killing correspondent Tareq Ayoub. On Thursday, Al Jazeera editor-in-chief Ahmed Al-Sheikh said: “This adds to the growing number of evidence that will one day prove that the attack on Aljazeera was premeditated… at the highest levels. Aljazeera was being targeted at the time because the people who were waging war on Iraq didn’t like what it was showing. We talk about terrorism, this is pure terrorism,” he said.