Belgian daily hit by cyber attack

One of Belgium's biggest daily newspapers, Le Soir, was hit by a cyber attack on Sunday night.

After the attack, the Rossel group, which owns Le Soir and other titles, had to shut down its website overnight, Xinhua news agency reported. The website of the title Sudpresse was also affected by the attack. The print editions of the newspapers appeared as normal on Monday.

Director general of Le Soir, Didier Haman, said in a statement: "We are trying to determine the origin of the attack. We have shut down the sites to avoid getting infected by more information or propaganda that appears on the pages. We have the system internally already able to recover."

The individual or group behind the attack is not yet known. A statement by the newspaper said that at present, there is no reason to suspect a link to the cyber attack launched last week against the French television channel TV5MONDE.

A group that claimed to be affiliated with the radical Islamic State hacked TV5MONDE on the night of April 8, interrupting broadcast for around three hours.

In January, the offices of Le Soir received a bomb threat after it re-published controversial cartoons from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.